Several More Coincidences than Safe
by Doppler Effect
Summary: Unconnected drabbles about the youngest spy of MI6 and two alchemists. How they joined together to prank their friends or simply to have a good time, if they cashed in debts with each other, in the case that they met, etc.
1. Shootout

a/n: Just some random stuff, mostly one-shots, about FMA and AR. Like how they might have met, or how they might have dug each other's butts out of certain situations. DO NOT TAKE SERIOUSLY! This is just meant to be weird and funny. Really weird, really strange, and really random. Okay? Capeche? And maybe, if you ask politely, I'll do a longer story with an actual plot line. Eventually. And when I have time. I still have to finish that NCIS/FMA story (I haven't forgotten you!).

This one in particular is an AU on FMA's part. Manga verse. Homunculi decided that the alchemists were too dangerous left to their own devices, and restrained them in Central prematurely. Shortly before the Promised Day. This one also has a different version that shares the same beginning, and will be posted later. Like, in five minutes.

Also, the whole cross-dressing thing. Yes, yes, I know. It's old news in the AR verse. However, I couldn't resist. Sorry for being repetitive.

Breaking Point means that that's where the next chapter changes at. The beginning of the next chapter will be the same until that point. Basically, it means you can skip the beginning if (when!) you read the next chapter.

Don't own!

Recently added statement: Look up the meaning of FFSAS on my webpage. It's kind of self-explanatory, but still.

* * *

><p>Not good.<p>

The whole situation could fall under that category. The rebels had thought that the homunculi wouldn't take interest until the time had come to sacrifice them.

They were wrong. All five of them had mysteriously disappeared to the outside world. Of course, their friends knew what had happened. They'd even tried a few times to get them back. The attempts had, of course, failed. No one else outside had a clue what was happening.

There was no hope. The five alchemists would fall, and with them, their country. Everyone would die for the greed of one. There was no hope.

...Or was there?

All five sacrifices were sitting in a room below Central, hands immobilized in such a way that any alchemy would be impossible. Both of Ed's pieces of automail were missing. Pride had forced Mustang to use a Philosopher's Stone to revert Al's body to its original form. Mustang was now blind, and Al severely weakened.

There was no light to the situation. All possibilities of escape were gone.

So why had Edward's expression suddenly gone calculating and nervous?

"Ed?" Izumi asked. "Do you have an idea?" All attention went to the blond.

"A bad one..." Edward looked at Alphonse. "Do you think we should risk calling...?"

Alphonse's eyes widened. "Well... Would that be a good idea? It might cause more harm than good..."

"I sincerely doubt that it can get any worse than what's happening now. Besides, there's no way to call anyone," Mustang pointed out.

The brothers ignored him. "It's been a while since he gave it to you," Alphonse said. "It might be broken..."

"Right..."

"We don't have any other options, if you've noticed. I don't know who you're talking about, but call him," Izumi interrupted.

Edward and Alphonse exchanged glances, and shrugged. Edward maneuvered himself into an odd position, cocking his head and raising his arm so that they connected. Running his fingers through his hair, he pulled out the hairband. Edward slipped all his fingers into the hairband, and stretched them out until the band snapped. A crackle of electricity sparked up from it.

"You're calling someone by breaking a hairband?" Hohenheim asked. He shrugged. "Whatever works, I guess."

Edward pointed to the small wire sticking out of one end of the broken band. "Sort of. Once that was broken, it stopped transmitting a signal, which alerted the people at the other end."

"Where'd you meet the guy?" Mustang asked for the sake of conversation.

"That's the problem," Alphonse said, laughing. "We're not completely sure it _is _a guy from the way we met him, but we think it is. We're pretty sure. Sort of. Not really. Actually, we have no idea."

"What?"

Edward laughed as he remembered as well. "Remember that weird report?"

"Your reports are always weird."

"Well, the one from Trinsdale?"

"The one where the lions got loose?"

"No, the one after that. And the lions were his-her?- fault too. He told us that. Anyway, when we were trying to catch that random idiot guy who was trying to create that poison, this girl came bursting through a window with a machete and a dress. She grabbed the guy and tossed him out the window. A day later, while we were discussing the weirdness of it, he-then a _he-_randomly dropped in from one of the vents and took credit for all of it."

"And you didn't think to bring him in?" Mustang asked, sighing.

"Well, he sort of left through the sixth story window..."

* * *

><p><strong>Breaking Point<strong>

He didn't come. The five sacrifices were positioned where they needed to be, rock from the ground holding them there. The homunculi were scattered around, obviously enjoying the moment.

Until a crack of a gun rang out, and Edward jerked backward, blood running from his chest. He collapsed, still as a corpse. Eight people/beings shouted out in surprise and anger.

The surprise was intensified when Alex Rider ran in firing a machine gun.

Carefully aimed, the spray of bullets first went through the homunculi to keep them back. Then it went through the rocks, destroying the restraints. Immediately, the alchemists shot up, lunging for the homunculi.

* * *

><p>"You shot Alex!" Izumi yelled at Alex, who seemed completely unperturbed.<p>

"_Had_ him shot. There's a difference."

"Doesn't matter who pulled the trigger! He's dead!"

"Then I guess you'll all learn to not try to pull debts on me again, since I tend to go a little extreme with distractions so that I can make my move. And about the whole shooting thing..." Alex crouched by Edward. He nudged him with his foot, to the anger of the others. "Well, only sort of. Oi, Ed! E~d!" he trilled. "Come on! Wake up and taste the bacon! ...The imaginary bacon, anyhow. Forgot to bring some."

A few seconds of silence, and then Edward groaned. Sitting up, he felt the wet liquid plastered all over his front. "What the-? You shot me! You freaking shot me!"

"Technically, Ben did."

"Hey!" a voice shouted, the body for it yet to be seen. "Don't throw the blame on me! You gave the order!"

Edward and Alphonse exchanged glances, while the others stayed motionless in shock. The homunculi were gone, via much gun fire and some very angry alchemists. "We did say that if anyone could make the situation any worse, it would be you," Alphonse admitted.

Alex didn't look offended. "If you two hadn't used some lame excuse last time to say that I owed you, we wouldn't be in the position we're in, now would we? So don't blame me. If I really wanted to, I could say that _you_ owe _me_ two times over now. But I'd never call in that debt, so it'd be useless."

Edward smacked his head with his palm. "Never again. Never again am I going to mess with a psychopathic spy who has no compassion for others."

"Now that's not completely true," Alex argued.

"Note that he's not denying all of it," Ben said, walking towards them from one of the side tunnels leading to the cavern. He had the sniper rifle he'd used to shoot the blond alchemist slung over his shoulder.

Alex rolled his eyes at his partner. "Anyway, I'm not a psychopath-"

"No, you're just mentally disturbed," Ben interrupted. "No big difference." Turning to Edward, he continued, "No compassion? Please. That's an understatement. To keep our cover for another few minutes, he once shot me. Minus the blank and donated blood we used on you."

At that point, the alchemists became extremely thankful that things had gone as well as they had. It seemed that the brothers' worry had been well placed.

"Well yeah, but you were wearing _Kevlar,_" Alex protested.

"You gave me no advance warning, and what if you'd _missed_?"

"At point blank range?"

Ben through his hands up in the air. "I give up. I'm going to die if I spend anymore time around you."

"Maybe you should go back to the FFSAS. I heard Eagle's been missing y-"

"**I'm fine where I am**."

"That's what I thought." He turned back to the others. "Well, bye then." He waved a hand over his shoulder in farewell.

"Preferably not," Ed called after him.

Alex laughed.

* * *

><p>an: Yeah, rough, I know. But did it make you laugh? Or were you just like 'That sucked. And this is in the HUMOR category?'? So? Reviews are welcome.


	2. Bad Actors

a/n: This chapter is the alternate ending to the last one. The Breaking Point is where it changes, so if you want you can just skip to that. I won't be offended, since I'd do it too. :P

Do you honestly think that I own these two series? No. No you don't.

* * *

><p>Not good.<p>

The whole situation could fall under that category. The rebels had thought that the homunculi wouldn't take interest until the time had come to sacrifice them.

They were wrong. All five of them had mysteriously disappeared to the outside world. Of course, their friends knew what had happened. They'd even tried a few times to get them back. The attempts had, of course, failed. No one else outside had a clue what was happening.

There was no hope. The five alchemists would fall, and with them, their country. Everyone would die for the greed of one. There was no hope.

...Or was there?

All five sacrifices were sitting in a room below Central, hands immobilized in such a way that any alchemy would be impossible. Both of Ed's pieces of automail were missing. Pride had forced Mustang to use a Philosopher's Stone to revert Al's body to its original form. Mustang was now blind, and Al severely weakened.

There was no light to the situation. All possibilities of escape were gone.

So why had Edward's expression suddenly gone calculating and nervous?

"Ed?" Izumi asked. "Do you have an idea?" All attention went to the blond.

"A bad one..." Edward looked at Alphonse. "Do you think we should risk calling...?"

Alphonse's eyes widened. "Well... Would that be a good idea? It might cause more harm than good..."

"I sincerely doubt that it can get any worse than what's happening now. Besides, there's no way to call anyone," Mustang pointed out.

The brothers ignored him. "It's been a while since he gave it to you," Alphonse said. "It might be broken..."

"Right..."

"We don't have any other options, if you've noticed. I don't know who you're talking about, but call him," Izumi interrupted.

Edward and Alphonse exchanged glances, and shrugged. Edward maneuvered himself into an odd position, cocking his head and raising his arm so that they connected. Running his fingers through his hair, he pulled out the hairband. Edward slipped all his fingers into the hairband, and stretched them out until the band snapped. A crackle of electricity sparked up from it.

"You're calling someone by breaking a hairband?" Hohenheim asked. He shrugged. "Whatever works, I guess."

Edward pointed to the small wire sticking out of one end of the broken band. "Sort of. Once that was broken, it stopped transmitting a signal, which alerted the people at the other end."

"Where'd you meet the guy?" Mustang asked for the sake of conversation.

"That's the problem," Alphonse said, laughing. "We're not completely sure it _is _a guy from the way we met him, but we think it is. We're pretty sure. Sort of. Not really. Actually, we have no idea."

"What?"

Edward laughed as he remembered as well. "Remember that weird report?"

"Your reports are always weird."

"Well, the one from Trinsdale?"

"The one where the lions got loose?"

"No, the one after that. And the lions were his-her?- fault too. He told us that. Anyway, when we were trying to catch that random idiot guy who was trying to create that poison, this girl came bursting through a window with a machete and a dress. She grabbed the guy and tossed him out the window. A day later, while we were discussing the weirdness of it, he-then a _he-_randomly dropped in from one of the vents and took credit for all of it."

"And you didn't think to bring him in?" Mustang asked, sighing.

"Well, he sort of left through the sixth story window..."

* * *

><p><span>Breaking Point<span>

An hour later, five men appeared outside the door, all wearing military uniforms. One looked two big for his uniform, another looked like there was a fifty percent chance he would've put it on backwards, and only two looked like they knew what they were doing. One of the two was carrying a backpack. Another was looking at a map, his face completely buried in it. If anyone looked closer, they would've seen that it said on the front: "Illegal map of Central, Amestris. Use for malicious use ONLY."

The two younger Elrics exchanged glances. Knowing Alex, he probably would have been in some Godforsaken place that would take him a few days to get out when he had gotten the alert. He'd be too late.

The men set out, moving among them and removing the restraints. They were also careful to make sure that none of them could break free and attack. "If you wouldn't mind coming with us..." the person who looked like he might have put his clothes on backwards said cheerfully.

"So that we can be sacrificed along with the rest of the country?" Izumi snapped.

"Well, yeah..."

"So why would we cooperate with you?" Ed pointed out, exasperated.

" 'Cause, well...'cause?" The man frowned, irritated about everyone gaining up on him.

"Look, why do all of you even want the country to die?" Mustang asked, trying to buy time. If there was even the slightest chance that they could delay long enough for the mysterious ally to come and help, they would take it. It was better than everyone getting killed without putting up a fight.

"There's going to be shiny lights," the first one to speak said.

"My ex-wife slash stalker is in the country. That's good enough for me*," the one who looked too big for his uniform said.

"I bet Wolf," the one looking at the map had yet to glance up from it, but jerked a thumb at the last person to speak, "twenty bucks that I could live through the end of the world. For my defense, he got me drunk. Anyway, I think this will suffice."

Edward frowned slightly. That name sounded familiar.

"I was involved in the bet, too," another admitted. "And I will _not _lose money to Coyote." He glared pointedly at the person behind the map. "Also, I got dragged along. Being the medic and all."

"There are more scary things than some nut job trying to kill everyone in the country," the last person said seriously. In fact, he seemed to be the most honest. "Like Eagle with sugar." He glanced over at the hyper one. "Or my superior. It'd be better if he didn't drag me into his suicidal missions, but nooo, the stupid freaking idiot has to-" He broke off, as if finally realizing that there were others listening to his rant. "Never mind."

Edward grinned. Ben Daniels, MI6, noticed and returned the grin in triumph. From the angle they were at, no one else saw the exchange.

"Well, wouldn't want to disappoint you, now would we?" Ed said cheerfully. The other four alchemists turned to him in shock. "But really, what were your parents thinking, naming you after animals?" _Code names. _"Hopefully, none of you are named after a bug." _Possible bug nearby, or someone could happen to be listening nearby. _"What time is it anyway? No one ever bothers about that. Around six, right? It can't be five." _There aren't five of you. There's six._

The alchemists and K-Unit caught on. Edward wasn't one for odd talk like that, and it was obvious.

"Six'll be coming around soon," Ben said, shrugging his backpack off. It hit the ground with a metallic sound. He opened it, and pointed at the two automail limbs inside. Edward nodded, and between the two of them and Alphonse, they got the limbs connected. _The other person will be here soon._

"Are we riding to the end of this or walking?" Alphonse asked as they stood up. _Is Alex (Rider) here, or are we doing this on our own?_

"Our ride should be around here somewhere," Ben said with a shrug. "Should be is the key phrase here." _He should be around here, but knowing him he's probably off screwing around._

"Unless he misplaced it. Again, which apparently Ben does a lot," Snake said. _Ben misplaces his partner a lot. _"I've never actually seen it before, but he's always bragging about it." _This is the first time I've met him. Apparently, he's good._

"Aren't we on a tight schedule?" Mustang reminded everyone. _Quit screwing around with odd talk. Let's go._

* * *

><p>"Hey!" the last guard they had to pass to get out of the military base exclaimed. "Are they supposed to be leaving this area?" The guard was in on the situation with the Father. Ben gritted his teeth, preparing to knock the guy out.<p>

"The building was on fire," Wolf said quickly. Too many witnesses. Ben noticed this as well, and relaxed from his stance. "We had to evacuate."

The guard frowned. "It doesn't look-"

An explosion rocked the ground, and all of them whipped around to see a part of Central fly away, on fire. A few more smaller explosions went off. The guard started running towards the building, grabbing a fire extinguisher as he went.

Everyone turned to Wolf. "I swear, I had nothing to do with that," he said immediately, holding up his hands.

"Whatever. Let's go, shall we?" Snake gestured to the open way.

* * *

><p>"Where the hell is your damn partner?" Wolf demanded five days later. All of them were scratched up, bruised, and looked like crap. They were also in a hospital, along with some of the other people who had joined in the revolution. Alphonse was the worst, even though he'd stayed out of the fighting. The homunculi-with the exception of Greed-had all been defeated, by alchemists and soldiers on the alchemist's side. A few with the homunculi had even turned from that side when they realized were fighting for people who weren't even human (technically, they were a lot of <em>humans<em>, with the plural).

Now, after the fight, and the person who'd sent in the group of backup had yet to appear. Although, the Amestrians were admittedly happy that they'd come, since they brought machine guns that worked better. Gotta love those machine guns.

"I don't know..." Ben frowned. "He does this all the time. It's annoying. And he never tells me where he goes either!"

Snake snorted. "Sounds like he never grew out of his teenage years."

Ben paused. "Erm. Yeah, well. About that. Maybe it's about time I told you guys..."

Edward looked up from his perch next to Alphonse's bed. The group was scattered between his bed and the few around his, which had some of their other friends in them. Mustang was still looking around at everything, obviously pleased at the return of his eyesight. The group consisted of those who were still at the hospital, whether they were being detained there as a patient (Alphonse, Eagle, Mustang) or if they were staying there because of the patients there (Edward, all of K-Unit but Eagle, Ben, Hawkeye) "No one told them? I thought that was obvious from the story I told about how we met him."

"Exactly. You would've thought that, wouldn't you? But then, I always did say that the FFSAS motto should be 'Brawn, not brains'."

The nine of them turned as one to face the teen nonchalantly leaning on Ben with one arm on his shoulder.

"Um..." Edward began.

"When did I get here?"

"Yeah..."

"About five seconds ago. However, because of Wolf's obnoxiously loud voice, it was almost impossible to miss what was being said. As for why I wasn't here, I was busy getting shot at by some ticked off terrorists. Again. So I asked Ben if he could take K-Unit and come over here. And aren't you all happy I did? See, you make new friends every day! Besides, I would've shot someone as a distraction, and then charged in with a machine gun. And it would've worked awesomely, but you all would've been pissed until you found out that it was just a blank**." Alex rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Yes, that definitely would've worked."

"Okay, creepy kid, moving on," Ben said. He paused. "Wait a second... You got shot at?"

"Of course."

"And you didn't get hurt?"

"...No."

"Alex..."

"What?"

"Did you get hurt?"

"No..."

"Alex."

"Yes?"

"Why are you leaning on me?"

"Because your shoulder's comfy?"

"You _are _injured, aren't you?"

"Of course not! Would I lie?"

"Yes!"

"Now I'm injured! That hurts, Ben, really. No faith in me."

"Why would I have faith? You lie all the time!"

"No I don't! ...Well, maybe sometimes..."

"A bit more than sometimes, I'd say."

Snake intervened. "Sit. I'm getting gauze and bandages. Where are you injured?"

"Erm," Alex said, moving away from the medic. "If you all don't mind, I have work at the office to be doing..."

"Oh no you don't!" Ben grabbed the back of his partner's shirt. "You'll run back off to school, and try to ignore us the next time we need you for a mission!"

Eagle raised a hand like a schoolboy. "Um... but isn't that good?"

"Not when he's bleeding all over the place! Besides, he still has paperwork to do! And every time he runs off, guess who has to do it? Me! Every single stinking time! Because he's too lazy! How's that fair, hm?"

"Yes, well, shouldn't you be complaining _to_ him?" Mustang asked, amused. Ben looked confused for a second, before Mustang pointed to where Alex had been.

"Damn it!"

* * *

><p>*Actually, she was taking a vacation in Germany. But he could pretend, couldn't he?<p>

**Now doesn't that sound familiar...


	3. Misplacement

a/n: YAY! I just realized that this is story numero 10!

I don't own Alex Rider nor Fullmetal Alchemist.

* * *

><p>The three of them sat, chatting amiably, for about fifteen minutes. Alex Rider, the youngest in the espionage business, and Alphonse and Edward Elric, the youngest to be involved in more than one military operation (and, in the elder's case, be a part of the military). Each side knew of the other's pastpresent doings in a job they shouldn't have been in, and, apart from the brothers, they had made a silent truce to never find out why the other was in the job. It had held up through the years they had known each other.

Their first meeting had involved a dog, a window, a fire, too much alcohol, and a penny. The three had departed with the knowledge that there was someone out there as strange as them. The second meeting had been about a month later. Mustang still had no idea where his desk had gone, but Ed and Al had found the whole thing hilarious. The desk was never returned, nor would the then-Colonel have wanted it to be if he knew the current state it was in. The Elrics had repaid him by inconveniencing Ben's ride. Permanently. It was not a pretty sight.

Now, while they didn't see each other often, they could call each other friends. The kind that would help you move the body (plural in Alex's case), if only because the others would have enough blackmail on them to make them the laughing stock of their friends until the end of time.

This particular time hadn't been planned. They'd just run across each other, each on their own job. Ed and Al were going to be meeting their superiors, and Alex would be shooting some people. While Ed was out of the military, he and Al still helped out since it was in such disarray after the whole Father incident.

"So, when're your superiors showing up?" Alex asked, leaning back with his arms folded behind his head.

Ed shrugged. "The guy probably can't read his own watch. He'll get here when he gets here." Al reprimanded him with a nudge, which Ed playfully returned.

"This the same person I borrowed the desk from?"

"Yup. When are you going to start shooting people? And please don't kill anyone," Ed said. The last part was both serious and not. He knew that Alex tried very hard not to kill people, and he'd also prefer to not be explaining to Mustang why he and Al had been with the psychopath who had 'randomly' started killing people.

_('Yeah, don't mind him...' Several more gunshots go off. 'Alex, try not to kill too many of them! Sorry about that, Mustang, but, well, they tried to kill him first, so it's really their fault... I know that we're supposed to be the law enforcement, but really, look at him! Could you honestly try to stop that happiness? You could? Well, good luck, because he might just try to kill you first... Of course that's why I'm staying back here! I like my head right where it it!')_

"Shouldn't have to. I'm meeting some old partners of mine, and then we're going somewhere else to shoot people. After we meet up with some other people, because apparently we have to deal with all that jurisdiction crap," Alex responded. "I'm planning to ditch half that stuff and leave it to Ben, but it's still annoying."

Al cocked his head. "Old partners?"

"Yup. Actually, they were never technically partners, but they gave me a bit of training before sending me out into the world of espionage..." Alex grinned evilly. "And only one of them knows I'm a spy. Oh, this is going to be fun breaking the news..."

Ed laughed. "Do we get to watch?"

"Sure, if you're not gone before they arrive. Speak of the devil." Alex dipped his head in the direction of someone across the street. "That's Eagle. He's one of the guys I'm talking about. Snake's over there, and Wolf should be contacting Ben right now. I haven't met Coyote yet, though, but he's probably here too..."

Ed and Al surveyed the area. Ed sighed, and waved his hand vaguely in a direction. "The bastard decides to show up _now_. Of course. I'll be right back." Ed stood, and started to walk over to where Mustang and Hawkeye were standing in the square. He left the outside table they were sitting at, drawing attention from the other two military officers.

"He's going to give us a few more minutes to watch your spectacular revelation," Al explained, adding in some sarcasm.

Alex smirked. "And it'll be worth it. Unless Wolf goes berserk. Which he will. Whatever, it'll still be funny. He and Ben are over there, by the way." He pointed at two people entering the area. "Doesn't look like they've noticed me yet."

* * *

><p>"Know the kid?" Mustang asked absently. They were both glancing out of the corner of their eyes at the table that Ed and Al were sitting at. Who the hell was the other blond?<p>

Hawkeye shook her head. "I've never seen him before, but it certainly looks like they have. Didn't they say something once about having no friends their age?"

Mustang nodded. "That's why I asked. Maybe they didn't know him then. Odd that they'd be able to make friends with someone they hardly see. With the amount of work we've been dumping on them, they've been having problems even checking in on their mechanic friend."

"That's probably why they're talking to him now. He must live here," she said.

Mustang shrugged. Ed had stood, and was making his way toward them.

"I can read the future. They're going to be another few minutes," Mustang murmured. Hawkeye glanced at him. "We're not in any hurry. Besides, we're waiting for our contact anyway."

Ed came to a stop in front of them. "Give us five minutes," he said, ever abruptly. He turned on his heel, and started to walk away.

"Never one for words, were you?" Mustang commented. "Actually, you've got as much time as you need until our contact shows up." Ed paused, and seemed to be considering something. "But in the mean time, we were warned to look for anyone with weapons. It's a possibility that someone's going to show up faking to be them, and the people were meeting said they won't be wearing weapons."

Ed shrugged, and continued. He'd never turned back around to face him, and kept walking back towards the waiting table. It had occurred to him that Alex probably had _at least_ five weapons on him, but decided that might not be a good thing to mention.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Alex?" Ed asked, sitting down. "Any idea who you're supposed to be meeting?"<p>

"Not really." Alex shrugged. "Ben's got the information on them. Why?"

"Apparently," the ex-Fullmetal alchemist said, "we're supposed to wait for our own contact to show up. Odd, that coincidence."

Alex smiled. "Well, well, this is going to be interesting... Try not to get my people's heads shot off by your friends, will you? My partner's lasted this long, and it would be a shame for him to die off now in friendly fire."

"Hey, same goes for you."

* * *

><p>Roughly five minutes later, and chaos exploded. Alex had realized the second that Ed had mentioned that they would be meeting each other at the square that this would happen. They weren't supposed to have weapons on when they met up (not like that had stopped Alex), yet FFSAS guys almost always had a weapon on them even when off-duty. So of course, with four guys in the square with weapons, the military had retaliated against the 'threat'. K-Unit, not liking being shot at, had responded.<p>

Most civilians had cleared the area. The two forces were scattered around, each trying to gain cover but unable to. Someone was going to get hurt soon.

Meanwhile, Ed, Al, and Alex all exchanged glances, and then looked back towards the fight scene. It was almost straight from a movie. Somehow, Wolf and Mustang were in the center, fighting all out. The rest of K-Unit was holding their own against Mustang's subordinates, who had showed up soon after the shooting began. Ben was conspicuously missing.

"Erm... Should we stop them?" Al asked.

"Yeah..." his older brother said.

"Probably..." the spy responded.

None of them moved.

"Okay, seriously, someone might get hurt," Alex said.

"Right." Ed nodded.

"Exactly." Al glanced between the many fights.

No motion from the table.

"Who wants to go out there first?" Ed summarized the reason none of them were moving with a question.

"I vote Ed. He brought it up," Alex said quickly.

"Hey!"

"Nii-san, you did mention it."

"Oh, come on!"

"Oh, shit, guys, look." Alex suddenly pointed toward the center fight. "Am I the only one who thinks one of them is going to die soon?"

The two in the center did look very ready to kill. Mustang was throwing bursts of flame at his Wolf, who responded with gunfire. Each was able to move out of the way fast enough to survive, but it wouldn't be long before one of them slipped up.

Alex smirked. "Hey, Ed, Al...?" Both of them turned to him. "Would either of you mind if I, say... sort of beat the crap out of both of our allies to get their attention?"

Ed laughed. "Alex, if you give Mustang a broken nose, or even a bloody nose, I will buy you lunch."

"Sold."

"Ed! Alex!"

Alex laughed, amused at the two brother's antics at each other, and flew from his chair with barely a pause. He dodged across the square, his objective a massive ball of furious activity. He avoided a fight between Snake and Breda, catching both of their attention as he bolted right behind Snake. While neither of them wanted to get killed because they took their eyes off their opponent, neither wanted to see the teen get killed either.

"Hey, kid, stop! Can't you see it's dangerous out here?" Snake yelled after him.

"Get back on the sidewalk unless you want to get hurt!" Breda shouted.

Both had stopped long enough in their fight to take notice of their surroundings. Snake was missing a comrade. He wasn't dead, but he wasn't their either. Breda wasn't missing two comrades, but neither of them were doing anything. Actually, they were both taking intense interest in the kid who had just interrupted their fight instead. The Elrics didn't look like they'd made any sort of move to stop him. Snake and Breda glanced at each other once, spoke without words, and mutually ignored each other until they saw what the kid was doing.

They didn't wait long.

Alex was barely a foot away from Wolf and Mustang, who had gotten dangerously close considering the weapons they were using, when he jumped into the air. He threw one hand out, and it slammed into Wolf's chest. He used that force to swing himself around, and kicked Mustang in the same place he'd put his hand on Wolf. His legs began to fall, and to keep himself in the air, Alex did something he regretted doing the second he did it: he kicked Wolf in the spot that boys and men of all ages avoid at all costs getting kicked at. Wolf dropped almost instantly, but Alex's legs flew back into the air and gave Mustang the promised bloody nose. Alex flipped into a somersault over Wolf, kicked at his back once for good measure, and then hopped off.

By then, all fights in the square had come to a stop to watch their leaders get the crap beaten out of them by a teenager raised by ninjas. Eagle, who happened to be in speaking range of Snake, said, "Did I really just see our fearless and indestructible leader get nut-kicked by a kid? I mean, seriously?"

"Um... yes?"

Breda glanced over at Falman. He gestured with open palms at the two men who now had better problems to deal with then fighting each other. "What are we supposed to do? This whole thing has gone to hell in a waste basket."

"I am so touched by your concern," Mustang said dryly through his bloody nose.

Hawkeye was the first to address the cause of the situation. She turned to Alex. "Who are you?"

Instantly, three people across the square burst out laughing. Ed toppled over backwards in his chair, and Al went forwards. Ben stumbled out of a nearby alley, a hand over his mouth as he desperately tried to stop laughing before Wolf killed him. Everyone else but Alex looked at them, confused.

"Fullmetal!" Mustang yelled. "What the hell have you done _now_?"

"Actually, it wasn't their fault," Ben said, stifling most of his laughter. "You see, when we called in K-Unit, we didn't realize they'd come in looking ready to shoot the living daylights out of a T-Rex. We even told them to leave their guns behind."

"You did not-!" Snake began.

Ben held up a hand to quiet him. "At least, I thought we had." Alex looked up at the sky, taking great interest in a cloud. "Apparently, our letter got lost in the mail. Or, to be accurate, it never left the office. Did it, Rider?" Ben folded his arms, raising an eyebrow. He cocked his head at Alex, a smirk on his face.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Alex continued staring at the blue above him, an innocent expression on his face.

Ben turned to K-Unit and the Amestrians. "All in all, the letter that would've stopped this whole mess is currently somewhere in our ventilation system. Courtesy of MI6's best. Scary, isn't it?" He gestured at Alex.

"Wait a second..." Snake frowned. He turned to Alex. "I know you from somewhere."

Alex smacked his hand over his heart. "Snake! That hurts, really. You and Eagle should know exactly where you've seen me from! And I would hope that Wolf definitely would."

"I know him?" Eagle asked Snake, pointing at Alex.

"Hint: I kicked Wolf out of a plane."

"Cub?" Snake and Eagle shouted at the same time.

Mustang pointed a finger at Alex, and, turning to Ed and Al, who were finally quieting their laughs, asked, "Who the hell is he?"

"The contact you were supposed to meet," Ed said, and started laughing again. "Not what you were expecting, huh?"

"Fullmetal, this is not a laughing matter."

"Not for your nose it's not!"

Ben waved off all the disturbances. "Can we do this when we don't all have things to be doing. Let's restart. I'm Agent Daniels, that's my lunatic partner Agent Rider, and from K-Unit, Snake, Coyote, Eagle, and their leader who is currently hating nut sensitivity, Wolf."

"One more word from you, Fox, and you won't be seeing straight tomorrow," Wolf snarled, getting back to his feet. He turned to Alex. "You."

"Uh, yes?"

"You. Are. Dead."

"No I'm not. I'm perfectly alive right now. Why would you think differently?

Wolf turned to Mustang. "I know we have some odd kinks in this whole arrangement to work out, but I think the rest of you can handle it without me while I go kill the kid. Do you mind?"

"I was thinking the exact same thing. Just for different people."

After a temporary recess in which half the group got scared off (that did not include any of the original three intended), the group finally reconvened to get done what they were supposed to do.


	4. Sidetracked Meeting

The meeting of the reconstruction of Central had been going normally to start. It was taking place in Havoc's house, since it was his turn to host it. By looking at the floor, or anywhere as a matter fact, it was obvious that he hadn't taken much time to clean the place up for his company. All of them had shifted things aside to make room, and had found somewhere to sit, whether it was the sofa, a chair, or the floor.

It was halfway through when the unexpected happened.

The window suddenly came open, and Alex Rider bolted through it and across the table right next to it. Ed and Al glanced up. "Who'd you irritate this time?" Al asked, not even pausing.

"The usual." Alex started running across the room.

"Right." Ed nodded, and he and Al turned back to what they'd been doing: absolutely nothing.

"Hey, do you guys mind killi-"

"No," Ed and Al said simultaneously. "Not doing it."

"_Knocking out_ the next person who comes through the door?" Alex rephrased quickly, opening the door. The others in the room just stared at him, still not comprehending what the hell was going on.

"Sure. Why can't you do it yourself?" Ed called the last part out, since Alex was already sprinting down the hallway.

"He's got a few guns and I don't have one?" Alex suggested.

Ed and Al nodded like that was normal. "Okay. Good luck saving the world again!" Al shouted.

"And my ass!"

The sound of Alex's fading footsteps filled the silence, and then the back door opened and closed as he departed from the house.

They all turned to look at Ed and Al, who were both sitting calmly on the floor.

"Care to introduce us to your departed friend?" Mustang asked, trying to not yell at them.

Ed snickered. "His sanity has certainly departed."

Al gave an uncharacteristic smirk, before saying, "That was Alex. He's a friend of ours. We met a while back, and we've run across each other a few times after that. He's a spy for an espionage group, whose name I'm not allowed to mention. I don't think. Actually, he wasn't allowed to mention it either."

"That didn't stop him," Ed said, snickering again.

"No, it didn't." Al laughed. "Now, what did he say about…? Right. Knock out the next person who comes through the door. Right…"

He rose, and Ed joined him. Al peeked around the doorway at the front door, and shrugged. He leaned against the wall to wait, still in the room with everyone else. Ed moved slightly to his side, not in view of the doorway. He mocked looking at a watch he didn't have.

"So, you're actually going to do what he asked?" Mustang stared at the two. They'd never been this cooperative before. Never. Actually, Al was, but Ed? Please. The world would end first. Wait, hadn't that almost-sort-of happened already? That explained it.

Ed shrugged. "Knowing that guy? He's either on his way to save all our ignorant butts or just did. Best not to ask, and just go with what he says."

"And when the door opens, you're going to-" Hawkeye broke off as, possibly on cue, the door was slammed open, and someone started running through it. Alex had evaded them well enough that they hadn't known that he hadn't left the house.

Instantly, both brothers reacted. The second the man started to run past the doorway, both tackled him and knocked him out. It was only then that they glanced at his face.

Al turned to Ed. "Maybe he meant the other guy that came through the door."

"Yeah, I think so too… Um… Whoops?"

"Who is it?" Havoc asked curiously.

"Uh, Ben. Alex's partner…" Ed started dragging the body into the room.

**Five minutes later**

Ben sat up suddenly, pain in his head. He bit back a groan, and looked around. Two of Alex's friends were squatting by the doorway to the hall. Several adults were lounged around the room, some in chairs, some on the couch, and the remaining on the floor.

What had happened? He'd been following his partner, who'd been trying to get out of paperwork again. Ben had chased the teen across the whole city. The last thing he remembered was breaking into a house he'd seen Alex go into but not come out of. Probably the house he was in now, and that hallway looked a bit familiar from five minutes ago…

"Hi, Ben! Bit different situation from when we last met, no?" Ed asked cheerfully. A little too cheerfully. Ben had the sneaking suspicion that Ed realized he'd knocked out someone in the process of doing his job (a job which failed to mention in its description that he would have to chase his partner to get him to do his paperwork).

"Yeah… Did you guys knock me out?" he asked incredulously. He was the famed Rider's partner! He couldn't be knocked out by two amateurs! That was just… just… _wrong._

"They were in the military for a while, and their teacher was kinda scary," one of the adults said with a shrug.

Oh. That was a bit better for his dignity.

"So, when's the guy with a few guns going to come through the door?" Al asked, jerking a thumb at the door.

"The guy with _what_?"

Ed and Al exchanged glances and sighed. "Nothing. We were taken advantage of."

Ed rubbed his hands together. "Revenge shall be sweet." He grinned.

* * *

><p>an: I don't own FMA or AR. Now, the next one can either be the revenge or another one. I might do the revenge later if it's not next anyway. And sorry that this was so short.


	5. The Mother Hens

a/n: Did any of you read the chapter name and think 'uh oh'? ^.^

Also! Maybe I mentioned this, maybe I didn't, but if you want to use one of these drabbles and expand on it, go ahead! I want to read more of these AR/FMA fics, and this is the only one! That's just scary. So if you want to, don't even bother to ask permission. I won't even really care if you give me credit or not. Just. Type. Please! (Am I the first person to indirectly beg for someone to steal my idea? O.o)

* * *

><p>"Sir?" Hawkeye asked, gaining attention from her nearby comrades. Around them, bullets were being sprayed from the gang's guns on the other end of the street. "Should we try to call for backup?"<p>

Mustang gave it a second's thought. She took that time to shoot again at the opposing group before dodging back down behind the makeshift barrier again.

"Hey, Brigadier General?" Breda asked. "Why'd you think it was a good idea to do target practice with a nearby gang who had no interest in participating?"

Mustang shot Breda a look that he usually only reserved for those that truly irked him.* He turned to the female officer. "I think backup should be here soon. Or, at least, they should be coming. They might not be in the area around here anymore, but they probably are. And they like to shoot things, so they'll come."

"You have no idea if they'll be here," Hawkeye deadpanned.

"I have no idea," Mustang admitted. "Happened to speak to one of them right before we left, and they jokingly said that if they heard gunshots they'd be coming. But if they do come, they usually have enough guns on them to shoot down a small satellite, so we should be good."

While the other Amestrians had no idea what he was talking about with a satellite, they guessed it had something to do with that parallel universe that had recently been discovered.

"Usually, yeah." The group turned to see a man (who was really a four year old in disguise) leaning against a wall, tossing something up and down in his hand. He was out of sight of the opposing group, having no way to be fired upon by the gang. He directed his gaze toward Mustang. "Wolf said we should head out to look for you guys-and girl-when we heard the rain. Figured that if something was already going wrong, and everything was. And what do you know! It's like he's psychic!"

"Eagle," Mustang greeted. Eagle cocked his head with a smile in acknowledgement. "So, where's the others? Or did they get lost?"

"While I wouldn't put it pass them, I'm going to point out the two snipers on the roof. Snake's on the left, Coyote on the right. I think. Or it might be Coyote right, Snake left. And Wolf should be around the opposite corner, but as you said, he might have gotten lost." Eagle gave a slight smirk, although he knew that Wolf rarely got lost when it came to a serious job or mission. The only time he had was when Eagle had accidentally switched the maps, and it hadn't taken long to correct the error (even if Wolf's pissed-off level had reached the point of 'nuclear reactor gone off'). The bird-named FFSAS man had decided that he was now invincible since he had managed to survive that incident. "The only real problem we had on the way here was an awkward run in with the police, which you might have to clear up."

Mustang refrained from sighing. "Clarify."

"Uh, about five guys overpowered and knocked out by a very irritated man because he was interrupted from his job?" Eagle said, the tone creating a question in response to Mustang's expression. However, his outward composure was otherwise uninterrupted.

"Probably because it's illegal to carry around weapons in the city unless you're military or a police officer," Falman pointed out.

"Damn. We always run into that little glitch everywhere we go." Eagle palmed the grenade one more time. "So... Onto the explosive part of this?" He gave another smile, before pulling the pin from the grenade and lobbing it as far as he could down the alley. It exploded a second after it hit the ground, wrecking havoc on the other end. Confused shots rang out from them.

It was a lot more coordinated from the other groups. Snake and Coyote had a field day from their sniping positions, firing directly down. Wolf entered from around the back, picking off people trying to run and closing in at the same time. The main group shot towards the scrambling gang, easily finishing the fight.

* * *

><p>"Alright, who's injured?" Snake asked the second they got back to Mustang's office.<p>

"Who said anyone was injured?" Mustang asked as he dropped into his seat, leaning back.

"We held off on our own for five minutes against superior numbers before backup came, and you entered from the back alone," Hawkeye added the last part towards Wolf. "I don't know how you would've managed to avoid every bullet that came your way."

"And adding onto that," Snake continued, pointing a finger at Eagle, "You made a great target of yourself by standing right behind the main group while the rest of them were kneeling down."

"Oh come on! They could barely see five feet in front of them! That's like saying that you and Coyote should've gotten hurt because you were right above them!"

"Of course we wouldn't have gotten hurt. Who looks up?" Snake objected. He turned to Wolf. "I'll get to the child later." Eagle protested briefly before Snake shushed him. "Now, care to let me tend to any wounds you have?" His voice erased all doubt that it was a question.

"I'm not injured!"

Snake didn't bother protesting that, and instead deftly maneuvered himself into a favorable position. "If you're not, than you wouldn't mind showing me that shoulder you're favoring to prove your point?" Wolf narrowed his eyes at him.

Across the room, Hawkeye was doing something similar. "Sir, I highly doubt that you're not injured."

"Major, really, I'm fine!" the Flame alchemist put his hands up in a motion to prove that he could move them easily, and then folded them behind his head to prove that his arms and back were similarly in good condition.

"Then care to explain why you're not letting one foot touch the ground and why you happened to be favoring that leg on the walk back?"

"I'm not hurt!" both men under attack said simultaneously.

"Really!" their attackers also said in unison.

Meanwhile, their friends and co-workers were slowly backing away to the other wall; the ones who were injured were especially quick about it. "Should we go and make some popcorn, or run in fear for our lives and privacy from a complete pat down?" Havoc whispered conspiratorially.

"That would draw attention to us," Fuery said.

"But if we all left at the same time and then split up, it'd be harder to catch us. Every man for himself," Eagle added.

Snake called without turning his head, "Eagle, if you even think about walking out that door, you're going to be on a date with that wall over there."

Eagle winced.

Falman sighed. "Escape plan foiled again."

"Better believe it," Hawkeye said, before turning back to Mustang.

"This is kinda scary," Fuery said, reading everyone else's thoughts.

"Yeah. It's like Shwarzenegger** came into the room. While playing in the Terminator movies." Nobody there understood what he was talking about but Coyote, but they went along with it. Coyote didn't seem to have heard. In fact...

Breda looked around. "Where's your other friend?"

The others quickly scanned the room. Eagle shrugged. "He does that a lot. Don't mind him."

In the center of the room, Mustang and Wolf were making a futile attempt to get out of the situation they had managed to get themselves into. "Look, it's not deep, I'm perfectly fine with it, it barely needs a Band-Aid, it'll heal in a few days-" "-really, it's nothing, I've had loads worse, this isn't something you need to worry about, it's absolutely alright-"

Hawkeye and Snake exchanged a glance. Through some sort of telekinesis, they formulated a plan and put it to action. They turned back to the verbal sparring, but instead to the other's superior. The other's superior had no authority over them, now did they? "Shut up!" Snake roared, silencing both. Mustang and Wolf paused mid-excuse. It only lasted a second before Mustang tried to scramble a reasonable excuse together and Wolf tried to dodge the topic by reprimanding Snake.

Their excuses were still a jumble and had yet to make sense when they were interrupted again. "Sit down!" Hawkeye yelled, easily making herself heard over them.

They stopped again. Mustang, who had stood sometime during the argument, and Wolf were both subject to the glares of Snake and Hawkeye as they started to speak again. "Now, Wolf, let your medic look you over," Hawkeye ordered. And with the look to accompany it, who would disagree?

Snake was much more blunt. "Let me deal with the wound or you're going to make the corpses look bad."

"Eagle, you too!"

Eagle bolted toward the door. He turned just in time to see Hawkeye and Snake both point a gun his way, and say in the same creepily serious voice, "Put your ass back in that chair now."

The remaining ones not caught in the dilemma exchanged glances. "Scary people."

* * *

><p>*Any of you remember that one episode in the first anime with the battle scene between Mustang and Ed? The look I'm thinking of is the one that Mustang gave the crowd shortly before the fight. I couldn't stop laughing for the first five minutes after I saw it.<p>

**? How do you _spell _it?

Okay, so this one didn't have Alex or Ed or Al. Not even a mention. Sorry, but I figured I should stick some credit to their friends.


	6. Security Protocol

a/n: School begins for me Monday. That's going to give me a problem with updating, even if we go to the computer lab a lot. If we do, I'll mostly be doing research for a different story I'm planning because I don't like to type fanfics where other people (outside of **you** amazing readers, of course) can read it. I don't particularly like associating with people at my school, and I don't want to have to explain this to them since that would be a waste of my time. Aren't I a bundle of fun?

I thought I covered the disclaimer in my other chapters. No? Well. We'll have to check your vision, then. Or maybe I'm the one losing it...

* * *

><p>"You're <em>joking<em>," Alex said, disbelief filling his being. "You have got to be kidding me." Ben gave him an apologetic shrug of 'Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.' "But, but... That's ridiculous!"

* * *

><p>Ed gaped at Mustang. Al had a similar expression on his face at Ed's side. "What the... Mustang, I'm lost. Are you trying for <em>humor<em> for once? Cause right now, you're failing miserably."

* * *

><p>"Look, Alex, there's nothing I can do!" Ben raised his hands into the position that people do when they feel like someone's about to shoot them.<p>

* * *

><p>Mustang gave his ex-subordinate a glare. "While I wish to take credit for this genius yet evil idea, I can't. It was Grumman's. Besides, I got dragged in, and somehow ended up directly in the middle."<p>

* * *

><p>"There must be <em>something<em>!"

* * *

><p>"Then get our asses out of it!"<p>

* * *

><p>Ben could only give Alex a sympathetic look.<p>

* * *

><p>Mustang only grimaced.<p>

* * *

><p>Unknowing of the other, Alex and the Elrics all shared a groan.<p>

* * *

><p>Two cars pulled up across the street from each other. Nearly at the exact same time, the car doors started to open. From one car, two MI6 agents and one FFSAS team* came forth. From the other, two irate teenagers and a military group. The leaders left their groups, and shook hands between the two cars.<p>

"Brigadier General Mustang," the Flame Alchemist said, introducing himself.

"Something-Something Ben Daniels. I keep getting promoted because of my superior, and that's not a good thing," Ben replied with a smile.

"So, how did you get stuck with this baby-si-" Mustang started to ask jokingly.

"Finish that sentence and you're dead!"

"Watch it, buster!"

"_Excuse_ me?"

All three teens spoke simultaneously, and then exchanged surprised glances.

_'They're irritated too?' _Alex thought. _'Makes sense, I guess.'_

_'The other doesn't want to be here?' _Ed noted.

_'Nii-san yelled at Mustang without swearing?' _Al was shocked.

Mustang dropped out the word 'baby-sitting', but otherwise ignored the outbursts. "-job?"

"Superiors. You?"

"Superiors."

"Sometimes, I think the only reason worth keeping any superiors around is that they take care of the diplomacy and a lot of the paperwork," Ben said wistfully, knowing full well that he would never in real life be able to boot his superiors from their positions.

"Amen," Ed muttered.

Alex raised his hand. "Can we move this talk _inside_, out of sniper radius? This whole thing's stupid, but if you're going to do it, at least do it right."

The oldest Elric almost made a snappy comment about this being Alex's fault in the first place before he heard Alphonse murmur something next to him that made him freeze in his tracks. "His first thought is snipers?"

Ben winced, slightly enough that almost no one caught it. The brief change of expression was noticed by Alex, however, whose cross expression only became more cross in response. "Fine, fine, Mr. Bossy..." The last part was a mutter, and only Mustang heard it. He grinned in response.

Alex ignored them and unlocked the door before walking into the house, leaving everyone behind him to wonder where he'd gotten the key from.

* * *

><p>Ben looked nervously between the three teens like they were about to bite him. The Fullmetal Alchemist and the youngest spy were creating fireworks between themselves, while the younger brother appeared to be the only one paying attention to him. "Okay, um..." He glanced over his shoulder where Mustang was abandoning him for the time being. "We're just going to leave you guys alone, since you probably don't want us old people hanging around. Um, Alex, this is Edward and Alphonse. You two, this is Alex. ...So, um... bye!"<p>

Ben slipped out of the room quickly, making a fast retreat to safer ground.

The tense silenced continued for another few seconds.

"So..." Ed began, voice implying anything but a comfortable conversation. "Mustang said this was all your fault."

Alex snorted. "Oh, please. Which part? Scorpia's over-reactive imagination? Or Blunt's psychotic idea? Or maybe I _shouldn't_ have pissed off Scorpia that last time because they were trying to nuke China**. Which one?"

Ed narrowed his eyes in challenge. Across the room, Al muttered in slight despair, "Oh boy."

"Moving the blame, are we?" Edward replied smoothly and arrogantly. Alex raised an enigmatic eyebrow. "Fine. I'll bite. Who's Scorpia?"

Alex waved a dismissive hand. "Pissed off terrorist organization whose ass I stuck a few big sticks up."

Two minutes of radio silence passed.

"Why are we here again?" Ed gave in. Al was surprised he had lasted two minutes and not strangled the other in the room yet.

"Scorpia's been bending over backwards recently to kill me. Through some hair-brained idea they came to the conclusion that we switched places to confuse them. Don't ask, I don't get it myself," Alex interjected as Ed opened his mouth. He scowled and closed it, leaving Alex free to continue. "I mentioned that they're bending over backwards, right? Yes, well, they're apparently having trouble seeing upside down. So our wise superiors decided to stick us in a house together for a month and hope one of us kills the other and solves the problem. That's what it seems like, anyways. They're excuse is that they're trying to quell the rumors while we're in here and 'protected'. Of course, I was standing right outside their hideout where I should've been 'protected' and got hit with a sniper..."

"Huh." Ed rubbed his chin thoughtfully, having chosen to ignored the last bit. It explained the earlier sniper comment, and merely gave Alex respect from Edward.

"You know..." Al said, an idea making its way to mind. Normally he wasn't into this sort of thing (his brother did enough of it for both of them), but staying in a house for a month without being allowed outside wasn't exactly his idea of a good time. "Ed and I are alchemists. And you're a spy."

"So?" Alex asked, although not rudely.

"And we all want out of here, right? I mean, we're not even involved, and you've got better things to be doing."

"Right." His brother nodded, a grin slipping onto his face as he began to catch onto what Al was thinking. Alex leaned forward, a Cheshire expression taking over his expressions as he put his weight on his forearms on his knees.

"So what if we..."

* * *

><p>"...A few days later, and we found out that Cub had kicked Wolf's ass out of that plane," Eagle finished to the delight of everyone there but the canine-named FFSAS man.<p>

"Any stories of your teens?" Ben asked the Amestrian military people.

"I wouldn't adopt those two unless I wanted my apartment burned down and it was too expensive to hire a bulldozer," Mustang corrected with a smile. "They're mature for their age, but think about when we were just a few years older than them, or even the early twenties!"

"Fine. So any stories about _the _teens?" Ben rephrased with a sarcastic roll of his eyes.

Snake entered the room, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "Code red." He immediately gained everyone's attention. Then, completely seriously, he said, "They're getting along. The teenagers are getting along."

Ben cocked his head. "Isn't that good?"

"Means the house'll last longer," Breda pointed out over his cup of coffee.

"And they have papers spread all over the table in front of them," Snake continued, urgency in his tone.

Horror filled the looks of all in the room.

"Do you think they're trying to get out of here?" Falman read the minds of everyone in the room aloud. "Temporary alliance in exchange for freedom?"

"That's what it looks like," Wolf agreed with a nod. "While I don't necessarily like being around them, I don't want my head on a pike in front of the Serge's cabin as a warning to others. What do we do in retaliation?"

"Hide under the bed?" Fuery suggested jokingly.

"Seconded!" Eagle agreed.

"An idea that won't make us seem like wusses in front of the kiddies," Wolf sighed.

"_I heard that!_"

Wolf blanched at the doorway.

Mustang waved it off. "There's nothing you can do to prevent him from hearing you if you say anything that is in the slightest reprimanding to his height. He can't hear a word of what I'm saying now, unless he's standing right outside the door or something."

Wolf nodded, less nervous.

"I've got an idea that's serious." Falman raised a hand. Attention went to him. "What if we just let them get away with it? It's that or end up with our faces in the floor or ceiling and unconscious. Bit less dignified than just looking the other way."

"And it's not like we want to be here, either," Snake agreed.

"But we'll get in trouble with our superiors," Ben said, exasperation aimed at not being able to go through with the idea. "Like Wolf's previously mentioned 'the sergeant kills us all comment'. Unless... We only _pretend_ to go along with it."

"That might hurt just as much," Breda pointed out.

"Crap. Well, we'll just have to go with it." Eagle shrugged.

* * *

><p>Five minutes passed. They all began to fret, wondering what would happen. A few more more seconds passed before Wolf gave a snarl that befitted his name and strode out of the room. Low voices floated into the room, and then he returned. He gave a bemused shrug. "Nothing's broken, and they look fine. I'd never think there was something wrong with them."<p>

"This is not going to be good," Ben muttered under his breath.

* * *

><p>"Phase two begins." Alex rubbed his hands together.<p>

"Aren't you supposed to be stopping the bad guys and not resembling them?" Edward muttered. "Okay, let's get started. They gave up like we thought, but that does not mean that any pity shall be shown."

Alphonse departed from the room, rolling his eyes at his friends' over-reactive dramatical issues. Ed waited a full ten minutes before leaving after him. Alex left a half hour after that.

As a result, all the windows were unlocked, the fire escape checked for usefulness, the box that controlled all the electrics in the house had an oiled wire leading from it, and the times of a pizza place checked. This and more was all done before the adults went to sleep.

They returned to the room, giving each other excited glances. It had worked.

"Okay, onto part three..."

* * *

><p>Eagle was the first person Mustang spoke to after he woke up. "We ordered pizza! I prodded Ed into mentioning when the nearest pizza place would open, so we asked for them to bring some over. So we get pizza!"<p>

"It's nine in the morning!"

"So? And I'm surprised Wolf's still sleeping. Usually he's up by five." The doorbell rang, and Eagle bounded over to it. "Guys! Pizza! Come and get it!" He opened the door, and pulled the box from the arrogant pizza deliver's hands, practically tossing the money at him.

"Well, at least we know it's not drugged," Ben pointed out with a shrug.

Five minutes later, and Mustang, Hawkeye, Fuery, Snake, and Coyote*** were staring at most of their comrades on the couch and chairs. With the exception of Eagle, who was face-flat on the floor, also snoring, but drooling as well.

"And Havoc never woke up?" Mustang asked without taking his eyes off the scene in front of him.

"No," Hawkeye answered.

"Nor Wolf," Snake added. None of them had moved.

"Now can we hide under the bed?" Fuery asked, no longer joking like he'd been the first time.

"If we're going to come out of this traumatized or dead or maimed or all three, God strike us down now," Coyote said.

The lights went out.

A pause.

"On the other hand..." Coyote muttered.

"Fullmetal!" Mustang yelled at the same time Snake roared, "Cub!", and Hawkeye called, "Alphonse!" She'd seen him near the electrical box, but hadn't given it another thought until now.

"What happened to not getting in the way?" Fuery asked.

"This is insulting!" Mustang responded. "They're taking all of us out without even having to face us! They knew we were just going to go along with it! And they're a bunch of teenagers who are half our age! If that's not insulting, what is?"

"Of course we knew."

The ringing sound of a frying pan hitting something rang through the house. A shadow behind him darted away. Ed's snickering followed it before he vanished completely into the depths of the darkened house.

"Oh boy," Snake muttered, unknowingly repeating Alphonse's earlier words. "This is definitely not good."

"Wait," Hawkeye said. "I've got an idea."

* * *

><p>"Ed, what was that for?" Alex asked.<p>

"He was an alchemist who could stop us from escaping. Now he's an unconscious alchemist. Onwards?"

"Yup. See ya!" Alex darted out of the room, the brothers right behind him. Alex walked out the back door. Alphonse went down the fire escape. Edward slipped out the window and jumped from it to the building next to it. If anyone had been left to follow them, it would've been hard.

Meanwhile, in a coffee shop nearby, Coyote, Fuery, Snake, and Hawkeye were waiting out the storm.

* * *

><p><strong>Two days later...<strong>

Mustang stepped into his office with the rest of his team, the FFSAS guys, and Ben following after him. Wolf and Havoc had just woken up, shortly before the others who had been drugged. Ben had said that the amount of knock out drugs he'd used on the two had been all Alex had had, or he probably would've drugged everyone else, too. The drugged pizza had apparently been courtesy of someone paying the pizza place to do that, saying it would've only been a prank. On the other hand, Mustang had gotten a mild concussion.

None of their attitudes were helped finding the note on Mustang's desk.

Having fun?

* * *

><p>an: *Because I just couldn't leave them alone. ^^

**As far as I can tell, all of these stories will be in an AU where Alex kept working in MI6 with Ben as his partner. Ever since he started, he'd already had a file going that said he was an agent, making him senior agent. Alex carries both humor and seriousness into his job, but doesn't slave over his job or freeload it; it's balanced. I probably should have mentioned this earlier, shouldn't have I?

***FFSAS teams are made of four people; Fox needed a replacement once he left. Therefore, my OC=Coyote. He's a very convenient OC, since he doesn't get in the way of much. He's based off a mix off two family members, resulting in someone who is the master of one-liners and almost never speaks, but knows exactly what he's doing all the time.

While I was explaining the plot line of 'They're stuck in the same space, and at first hate each other. But they realize that they're going to have to work together to get out,' (or something along those lines) to Tsuki, she thought I was talking about the pencil in the mechanical pencil I was staring at. ...Sure, Tsuki. Sure...


	7. Seminar

a/n: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or Alex Rider, for obvious reasons. Also, I'm not sure if I mentioned it on this story, but school started on Monday. Hurrah. I like school, actually. I get to learn. However, it also means that I have less time to type. So updates will be slower. But also, this story might be updated faster than my other one simply because I'll get more random ideas for this one than I will sane ideas for the other one.

* * *

><p>"Why the hell are we here again?" Edward muttered to Mustang in the FFSAS training facility in Brecon Beacons. They were in an open area, watching FFSAS men fill in around them before the sergeant could stand and yell at them for not finding a seat fast enough. This was only going to be a one-day stay for the Amestrians before they moved on.<p>

"Because we're looking at this world's military capabilities," Mustang reminded with a sigh. "I've already said that."

The younger rolled his eyes. "No, I mean why are _we-_" he gestured between himself and his brother, "-here?" Hawkeye also stood nearby, keeping her attention split between her friends and comrades and the room around them.

"Oh, that. Because you've seen a lot of the military facilities in Amestris and Xing and everyone else was busy."

"Making paper airplanes!"

"General Armstrong's stopping in. I doubt they won't be working on paperwork by then if they value their brains."

Ed rolled his eyes, but had no retort.

The sergeant finally stood, and the room silenced. By then, everyone had found a seat, and was aptly watching him. "First of all, I'm up here to explain the presence of our other military personnel in the room. Brigadier General Mustang, Major Hawkeye, and two consultants. I want all you girls to keep in mind that I want no repeats like last time when it came to having underage people in the military. We all know what happened last time."

Here there were some snickers, and people nudged someone particular in the crowd jokingly. He in response smacked them all away.

"On the other hand," he continued, eyeing that area, "we may already have kids here." He ignored them, and moved on. "The second reason is that they came here in time to get a lecture done by an MI6 pair, who'll be here anytime now. They'll be speaking about going undercover and deception and more stuff along those lines." Without really ending it, he stepped out of sight.

The four Amestrians exchanged glances and shrugged. It was still part of their original mission anyway, in a sense.

About ten minutes passed. The previously silent FFSAS men started shuffling.

Fifteen. Edward started to doze off, and none of the other three bothered to tell him to wake up.

Twenty. Muttering began among the FFSAS and Amestrians.

Twenty-five. People started slumping in their seats, not expecting the MI6 people to show up.

Thirty. Talking rose to a comfortable level, not too loud, but not secretive either.

Thirty-five. FFSAS guys were turned around in their seats and talking to each other.

Forty. Alphonse had started a game among the Amestrians and the people near them.*

Forty-five. Edward woke up and asked if they could leave _yet._ Then he went back to sleep.

Finally, the sergeant stood up and walked back into view. "Well, since they're either really late, or they got lost, we're just going to pretend that we didn't waste an hour of our time and get back to work. Go to the places you were supposed to be at." He started waving them off.

"All of you idiots failed!"

Heads turned to the guy standing in the middle of everyone with a commanding finger pointing to the air. Ticked expressions started shooting laser beams at him.

Another soldier sighed. "Alex, there's one very important rule when talking to a bunch of FFSAS guys. Don't tell them they're stupid! Or foreign diplomats, for that matter." He shot an apologetic glance at the Amestrians. Mustang shrugged it off with an amused expression.

"Well, they are! How the hell do you miss a teenager and a guy who was 'fired' from the FFSAS in the crowd? We weren't even in disguise! I mean, jeez!"

The FFSAS guys became to exchange quick notes among each other, and came to the conclusion of who the second 'soldier' to speak was. K-Unit needed no such notes. "Fox! What the hell are you doing here?" Wolf yelled to be heard over the muttering over his comrades at the second person. "And who's the kid?" He pointed at the teen, who was standing on his chair with his hands on his hips like he _owned_ that place.

Fox sighed. "Okay, maybe you have point..." he said as his partner gave him a victorious look. He glanced at Wolf. "We're the guys MI6 sent. Sadly."

"And you all failed!"

"Would you shut up about that and move on with the seminar?"

The teen raised his hands to the sky. "The only person who has any reason at all to have not seen us come in was him!" Alex pointed to Edward, who chose that exact moment to wake up with a comical snort and look around curiously, wondering why someone was pointing at him. "Awesome timing, you!"

"What?" Edward shot a glare at the FFSAS men who turned their heads to give confused expressions at him, having not only missed the MI6 people but also that teen in particular who was with the Amestrians. Not because he was short of course, but just in general had missed him.

None of his friends gave him pity and explained, but Alex dropped an explanation. "You're the only person who would've had an excuse to have not seen us come in. I even dropped hints! This place isn't exactly teeming with people! You should've noticed the people you didn't recognize!" The last part referred to the FFSAS men.

Edward snorted. "I did see you come in!" The FFSAS men and the Amestrians gave him disbelieving looks. "Oh, come on! You all honestly missed him walk out of the forest and drop in here from the roof? And he spoke a different language to someone else!"

Alex nodded approvingly. "Exactly! Nice going on that, by the way. All of you FFSAS guys got to put to shame. Shun! Shun!"

In front of the Amestrians, Wolf muttered to Coyote, "I thought it was Eagle. Half the time it sounds like he's speaking another language."

"Alex, quit rubbing it in and get on with it." Ben rolled his eyes. "Okay, ignore my obnoxious partner. He's only gotten more obnoxious over the years, which I'm sure you can all attest to." Confused expressions. "Oh no. Don't tell me you don't recognize him."

"He looks familiar..." Snake said slowly. "And I think I recognize his voice."

Alex shook his head at the sky. "I may have to rent a plane at this rate to kick you all out of. All of you but Wolf, because that wouldn't be unique. He's already been kicked out of one. So maybe... off a bridge? Hmmm..."

"You!" Wolf yelled, finally recognizing the teen.

"There's a response! If we're all caught up now, can I rent that plane?"

"No!" Ben shook his head, and climbed up to the podium. "That's it, I'm going to ask Blunt to permanently ground you to the field. I'd say to school, but you'd manage to get out of it."

"I would! Does this mean I can go?"

"Please!"

Alex hopped down from his chair and cheerfully skipped out of the area, whistling happily.

All heads turned back to Ben, extremely bewildered. The MI6 agent could only give an apologetic shrug. "I'm sorry about him. I think he just pulled that on you guys to get out of this. He's a lot better in the field. Anyway, sorry about the wait, but there was nothing I could do about that."

"Really?" the sergeant asked dryly.

"Not a thing. Would you believe that the kid's my superior?" he jerked a thumb in the direction Alex had gone. The sergeant paused, thinking about how bad his superiors were. He gave Ben the credit of a wince of sympathy. "Exactly. Now, let's pretend that didn't happen, and move on to..."

* * *

><p>Ben finished the seminar, and internally wished this next part wouldn't have to happen. "Questions?" he tentatively asked. This had never been pretty for the instructors when he worked here, and he doubted it would be good for him now.<p>

"Yeah!" a soldier yelled, and then continued on with his question without waiting for Ben to respond, "Why'd they let you into MI6 when you were kicked out of the FFSAS?" A few other soldiers nodded.

"Actually," Alex interrupted, making his reappearance. He figured if he was going to do anything today, it'd be save his partner's skin in front of his previous comrades, "SIS* specially hand-picked him. They called him out of the FFSAS while he was still here. He was never 'kicked out'. They sent him a request to join, and came up with a cover for his leave from here."

"A 'request'?" Ben said with a snort. "More like, 'Get your butt out into espionage and go cover one of our idiot agent's asses. You're leaving in five days.' There was no 'request'."

Alex gave a shrug. "Well, yeah. Who in their right minds would join the field of espionage? They dragged me into it! Although, it's kinda like a drug once you get into it, so it's no wonder how they get people to stay..."

Someone else asked, "Do you guys even have any idea what you're doing up there when you were giving the seminar?"

"Not a clue in hell!"

There were a few more general questions, before Hawkeye raised her hands. Ben nodded at her, and she asked, "Can you give a seminar like this to at least half the officers in Central including these two about doing their paperwork?" She pointed at Mustang and Edward, who viciously shook their heads in denial. Somehow, Edward had also gotten stuck into writing paperwork for he and Alphonse since they were consultants.

"We're good!"

"No, that's fine, you don't have to!"

Ben laughed and said, "As long as I can drag him-" he jerked his thumb at Alex, "-along and chain him to a chair so he can hear it, too. And it will involve a lot of things like 'harrassment of fellow officers and subordinates'."

"What if our fellow officers and subordinates are annoying and deserve it?" Alex asked, irked.

"Then you have to _deal _with them! Maybe they're annoying because you dump paperwork on them!" Ben shot back.

Alex waved that off. "Oh please. Crawley was annoying the first time I met him, and he had superiority over me then. He hasn't changed."

"Alex, Crawley is not your slave."

"Really?"

"Okay, big conversation for another time." He turned back to the crowd. "Any other questions?"

Edward shot his hand up, and yelled to the front, "Any good ideas on getting rid of paperwork?"

"NO!"

"YES!"

* * *

><p>*SIS is the other name for MI6.<p>

* * *

><p>*The game I'm thinking of is where you say three things to 'describe' someone, and everyone else has to guess who you're talking about. There's a trick to this game to win it: whoever answers is the winner. The descriptions don't have anything to do with it; they're only there as a distraction.<p>


	8. StarfishDialogue

a/n: Got through two weeks of school! Booyah! (I watched Teen Titans as a kid. So?) Good luck to all the people starting school now or still continuing it! I actually had this ready a week ago, but *cough* didn't type it up. I kinda forgot to, and then I had to get used to the school schedule, so… *cough* Yeah.

This chapter's going to be another two-parter. That's because this chapter will only be quotes. The next chapter will be written with who-said-what and written like a normal chapter. I challenge you all to guess in a review or PM before I post the next one! I'll number the quotes so it makes it easier if you want to try. And yes, there are specific people I have for who said what. Remember that there could have been more than one person who said something at the same time.

* * *

><p>1: "Hey, Mustang?"<p>

2: "Ed? What are you doing here? And what're you doing here this late? I hope this is quick, 'cause I was just going to turn in…"

3: "Don't mind him, Ed. A high ranking general's coming in for an inspection tomorrow. What's going on?"

4: "Um, I was wondering, are you legally allowed to hide a fugitive who's being shot at by ten assassins?"

5: "What?"

6: "Eleven!"

7: "Oh yeah, there was that other guy."

8: "No, we're not. Is there a fugitive out there being shot at?"

9: "Well, he's not being shot at _now_, but they're going to catch up soon. And the whole fugitive thing is because the one country got the wrong idea about him breaking into one of their military compounds…"

10: "That changes things a bit. But we need proof, if you don't mind. Legalities. Do you have any?"

11: "Yes! I have a tattoo only the Scorpia have!"

12: "Alex, that's probably not something you should be yelling…"

13: "Well, he asked for proof…"

14: "Hold on, am I being persuaded into harboring a terrorist or a terrorist defector*?"

15: "Technically, he's a spy who pretended to be a terrorist who defected. So really, he's not a terrorist at all."

16: "But I'd make a damn good one if I was! But I'm not. Which means all the terrorists should run in fear. Mwhahaha…"

17: "…Don't mind him. He's serious when it comes to his job, but otherwise he acts like a lunatic. Besides, his partner gave him a sedative for an injury he got, but it had side effects that are in play right now. So? Can you help?"

18: "Kid-sorry!-I gotta ask my superiors, and that'll take me a while. In the mean time, hide on the roof or something. No one looks on the roof."

19: "Or under the desks!"

20: "Or under the-what? Well, if you can all fit under there, go for it."

* * *

><p>21: "Hey, Alex! That's your name, right?"<p>

22: "Yeah?"

23: "Someone called Daniels is asking where the hell you are and what you're doing. And I'm asking how the hell he got this number."

24: "Tell him I'm under a desk hiding from Scorpia's ninja assassins. He'll understand. It's code for 'I'm under a desk hiding from Scorpia's ninja assassins'."

25: "There are sounds on the other end that sound like someone's banging their head on a table."

26: "He does that a lot. I wonder how he hasn't gotten a concussion yet."

27: "Daniels says to stay where you are, he'll take care of the Scorpia."

28: "Ooh! Shooting people! Fun! Tell me where to meet him."

29: "Daniels says… You're missing a… Wait a second. Okay, you're missing a _kneecap_?"

30: "Well, I never _lost _it, and besides, it grew back, like, a month ago!"

31: "Alex, that was something that you should've mentioned when we were dragging your butt across the city!"

32: "But it grew back!"

33: "That's not the point!"

34: "Yes it is! I'm like a starfish!"

35: "…"

36: "Daniels says you're an idiot."

37: "Tell him he says the nicest things."

38: "Does anyone have any idea how I'm going to explain the bodies in my hall, the kid previously missing a kneecap, and an MI6 agent shooting people to the general? Anybody? Anybody at all? No? Okay, then all of you need to get that cleared up before he stops by and make sure you're not around and neither are the bodies. Got it?"

* * *

><p>39: "Brigadier General Mustang! Why the hell are there bodies outside your door, a random bleeding kid I've never seen before and who shouldn't be here, and someone who's not in the military standing here holding a gun?"<p>

40: "Hey, it's dried blood!"

41: "Sir, I'm MI6, and so is he. We're here because his cover in Scorpia was blown and they chased him here. If we hadn't shot them, they would've shot us."

42: "I don't care who you are! Also,-!"

43: "You're a starfish!"

44: "…"

45: "_What_?"

* * *

><p>*A defector refers to someone who left something, usually a country, against that something's wishes.<p>

If you're wondering, Ben and Alex split up shortly after Ben gave Alex a dose of pain killers for his knee. Alex left him with a mysterious phone number to call at a certain time when they needed to regroup. Alex met up with two friends (wonder who) and they took him to a safer place for the time being.


	9. StarfishNormal

a/n: And this is the other part to it! I wrote them roughly at the same time when I typed them, but I decided to let this one sit for a day or two before posting.

And here's where you learn if you were right! But none of you rose to the challenge! (pouts) All that work...

* * *

><p>1: Ed peeked into the doorway, and asked, "Hey, Mustang?"<p>

2: He and Hawkeye, the only people in the room, looked up. Mustang answered him. "Ed? What are you doing here? And what're you doing here this late? I hope this is quick, 'cause I was just going to turn in…"

3: Hawkeye waved him off. "Don't mind him, Ed. A high ranking general's coming in for an inspection tomorrow. What's going on?"

4: "Um, I was wondering, are you legally allowed to hide a fugitive who's being shot at by ten assassins?" Edward tentatively said, but made it sound like a question. It wasn't often you dropped in on a friend and told them there might be assassins coming in through the windows in a few seconds.

5: Hawkeye and Mustang both asked the question asked most often. "What?"

6: "Eleven!" Alex called out of view from the hallway.

7: "Oh yeah, there was that other guy." Edward nodded thoughtfully, remembering.

8: "No, we're not. Is there a fugitive out there being shot at?" Hawkeye asked. These two just couldn't stay out of trouble, could they?

9: "Well, he's not being shot at _now_, but they're going to catch up soon. And the whole fugitive thing is because the one country got the wrong idea about him breaking into one of their military compounds…" Edward waved his hand dismissively, as if trying to make them forget about the whole thing.

10: "That changes things a bit. But we need proof, if you don't mind. Legalities. Do you have any?" Mustang asked with resignation.

11: "Yes! I have a tattoo only the Scorpia have!" Alex cheerfully exclaimed from the hallway again. He and Alphonse were both still out there and had yet to appear.

12: "Alex, that's probably not something you should be yelling…" the younger Elric said with a sigh. They were lucky the building was empty near where they were.

13: "Well, he asked for proof…" Alex protested.

14: "Hold on, am I being persuaded into harboring a terrorist or a terrorist defector*?" Mustang drew their attention back to the point of interest.

15: "Technically, he's a spy who pretended to be a terrorist who defected. So really, he's not a terrorist at all," Edward explained as if that made everything better and cleared up all the issues.

16: "But I'd make a damn good one if I was! But I'm not. Which means all the terrorists should run in fear. Mwhahaha…" Alex let out a laugh that had all three in the room giving the hallway a worried look.

17: "…Don't mind him. He's serious when it comes to his job, but otherwise he acts like a lunatic. Besides, his partner gave him a sedative for an injury he got, but it had side effects that are in play right now." Edward tried to soothe his friends' nerves, knowing Alex definitely not helping. "So? Can you help?"

18: "Kid-sorry!-" Mustang interrupted himself to prevent a tornado in Central, "I gotta ask my superiors, and that'll take me a while. In the mean time, hide on the roof or something. No one looks on the roof."

19: "Or under the desks!" Alex said.

20: "Or under the-what? Well, if you can all fit under there, go for it." Mustang shrugged, not actually expecting them to all be able to fit.

* * *

><p>21: The phone rang, and Mustang answered it. If anyone had looked in, it would've only been him and Hawkeye. Somehow, the teens had managed to maneuver themselves into a position that allowed them to be unseen. This put both adults on edge, since normally the brothers would've stood up and faced anything head-on. But then, they'd never been up against assassins before, had they? "Hey, Alex! That's your name, right?" Mustang called softly across the room as the person on the other end asked for the teen.<p>

22: "Yeah?" Alex responded, just as quietly. His voice also had a weird echo to it from the desk's echoes.

23: "Someone called Daniels is asking where the hell you are and what you're doing. And I'm asking how the hell he got this number," Mustang added the last part in irritation. No one was supposed to be able to contact that number without a military password!

24: "Tell him I'm under a desk hiding from Scorpia's ninja assassins. He'll understand. It's code for 'I'm under a desk hiding from Scorpia's ninja assassins'." Alex gave no hint of sarcasm in his voice, even though it clearly was.

25: "There are sounds on the other end that sound like someone's banging their head on a table." Mustang looked at the phone in amusement. The sounds could be heard clearly even while he held it away.

26: "He does that a lot. I wonder how he hasn't gotten a concussion yet," the teenage spy said thoughtfully.

27: "Daniels says to stay where you are, he'll take care of the Scorpia," the brigadier general continued as the banging sounds stopped.

28: "Ooh! Shooting people! Fun! Tell me where to meet him." Alex almost sounded like a kid heading to a candy store, making it all the stranger what he'd said.

29: "Daniels says… You're missing a… Wait a second." He couldn't have heard that right. "Okay, you're missing a _kneecap_?"

30: "Well, I never _lost _it, and besides, it grew back, like, a month ago!" Alex defensively said. How do you lose a kneecap? It's over there with all the blood and bone bits! Duh!

31: "Alex, that was something that you should've mentioned when we were dragging your butt across the city!" Edward exclaimed from the opposite side of the room.

32: "But it grew back!" Alex said again.

33: "That's not the point!" Alphonse said in exasperation.

34: "Yes it is! I'm like a starfish!" How the spy came up with that, the world would never know.**

35: "…" No one had a response to that.

36: "Daniels says you're an idiot." The Flame Alchemist broke the silence to send Ben's message through.

37: "Tell him he says the nicest things," the poor partner of Ben replied.

38: "Does anyone have any idea how I'm going to explain the bodies in my hall, the kid previously missing a kneecap, and an MI6 agent shooting people to the general? Anybody? Anybody at all? No? Okay, then all of you need to get that cleared up before he stops by. Got it?" Mustang reprimanded, reminding them that they couldn't just go and shoot up the whole place.

His effort was in vain.

* * *

><p>39: "Brigadier General Mustang! Why the hell are there bodies outside your door, a random bleeding kid I've never seen before and who shouldn't be here, and someone who's not in the military standing here holding a gun?" the general yelled, red in the face. Behind him, sure enough, there were the bodies of the Scorpia assassins. Edward and Alphonse had left before the shooting had started to see when the Scorpia were coming, and after giving the report had left again, saying to not drag them into this sort of thing again.<p>

40: "Hey, it's dried blood!" Alex was everyone gaining up on him recently?

41: "Sir, I'm MI6, and so is he," Ben explained respectfully, trying to salvage the situation. "We're here because his cover in Scorpia was blown and they chased him here. If we hadn't shot them, they would've shot us."

42: "I don't care who you are!" the general shouted. "Also,-!"

43: "You're a starfish!" Alex yelled out suddenly, pointing at the general.

44: "…" Everyone stared at him, confused.

45: Then simultaneously, they all said, "_What_?"

* * *

><p>*A defector refers to someone who left something, usually a country, against that something's wishes.<p>

**He got it from a joke my sister made. Thanks Tsuki!


	10. Puppet Master

Murder never sleeps. I got this idea while reading Kuroshitsuji. It's not the same murders as the one that happened in there or based off the same story, but it's still a group of murders. I just thought a murder scene with a bunch of them would be fun. Well, for me, not them.

This chapter's dedicated to **rainstripe**, because she almost cybernetically killed me (and she did whack me) when I told her about something I did in here, and **Writer With Sprite** and **SamayouTamashi** for telling me if the murderer was obvious or not (and Tsuki, who did all the beta reading).

I do not own Alex Rider, nor do I own Fullmetal Alchemist.

* * *

><p>There were almost a hundred people present at the party. Over twenty-five countries were represented. Some of the guests were parts of their government, others were running agencies, scientists, investigators, and a few high-ranking people in militaries. None of their jobs were strictly legal, and all of them knew how to play an underhanded game. All of them in the same place, at the same time...<p>

It was a disaster waiting to happen.

Alex observed this from one of the balconies in the mansion. Below, people chattered and talked, performing just about as much acting in a dozen minutes as Alex did in a day. He could pick out most of the people in the crowd, but a few left him confused. After asking a waiter about the ones he couldn't put names to, he leaned back on the railing again, satisfied.

A few present parties were of the espionage group. After years of training and work, none of them wanted to simply say out loud that they were in it. That would defeat the whole purpose, and the number of people who wanted them dead were more than could have fit in the mansion, however big it was. Jones was present to represent MI6, under the alias of working in a lower part of a different agency. Alex was there as her adopted son, since it was obvious they weren't blood related even though Smithers _had_ changed their appearances a bit.

It looked like others had gotten the same idea. Brigadier General Mustang and Major Hawkeye had arrived ten minutes late, practically dragging two blond teens behind them along. The purpose of pulling along their kids that was being done by the attendees was to try to prevent anyone from doing anything violent, however slim of a chance of that stopping them was. Three other underage children were present, all of them in their teen years. The trio had found themselves and grouped together, not wanting to socialize with the adults. The brothers looked to be fitting in perfectly, however.

Alex looked at them closely, trying to determine if they were the offspring off both people who had brought them or of just one. He frowned slightly, realizing that other than the blond hair, it looked like they were in no way related to either. Adopted, maybe? Or were they even- wait, he recognized them from somewhere. He hadn't met them before, had he? Amestris… Teens…

He drummed his fingers on the balcony thoughtfully. As he pondered his gaze drifted again to the adults. Wasn't that man the Flame Alchemist? Yes, and the woman was a sniper. Both had served in the Ishval war. They'd pulled together a group of loyal subordinates, and MI6's sources had told them that it was the same group that had pulled off the rebellion. Further inspections showed that it was a good thing they had.

That was it! One of those subordinates had been the Fullmetal Alchemist, a teen who had joined the military for unknown reasons. That was the older brother. The younger had gone with him on his travels, and in a suit of armor. Alex wondered how he'd managed to move around in the armor that he'd seen a picture of so well.

With that mystery solved, he moved on to the rest of the people. Someone had had a gun earlier in their waistband that had been discovered, and it had been amusing to watch a third of the people slip out to request an interrogation with him. So far, it seemed like the gun had been brought only in case something went wrong that night and someone else brought a gun for violent reasons.

While it seemed like no one else had a gun, they wouldn't be clearly showing it. Besides, Alex had confidence that nothing would go completely out of hand that night. He actually _did_ have a gun on him, but that was a fact he could keep to himself. And if someone else tried to pull a massacre, he doubted he would have to do anything unless the Flame Alchemist was the one doing it. Considering that the alchemist had brought two teens, the chances of him killing people openly was tiny.

All in all, Alex had high hopes for the evening.

So of course someone had to scream.

* * *

><p>With a ticked expression, Edward again grumbled to his superior officer, "Why the hell did you drag Al and I along?"<p>

Again, the superior officer responded, "Because we were forewarned that there would be several people along who would have no qualms about killing people if it suited their needs and that anything to try to prevent a massacre of tonight would be welcome."

Alphonse glanced up at him with a disgruntled but slightly amused expression. "Thanks for reminding me about those gory details."

"When are we leaving?" Ed asked, looking for an escape.

"I don't know. Whenever this thing ends."

"And you don't know when that is?"

"Not a clue. It wasn't five minutes ago, I can tell you that."

"Some help you are!"

Hawkeye and Alphonse exchanged exasperated glances. Half an hour there, and the two had already bickered several times. Upon inspection of that, Al wondered aloud, "Why hasn't anyone yet asked our relation to you?"

That stopped the arguing, and each of them paused to consider it. "It was also mentioned that some spies were coming, wasn't it?" Hawkeye asked.

Mustang nodded. "A bunch of people who are here aren't who they say they are. Instead of bothering with the charades, people are probably just ignoring the guises other people are putting on."

"You mentioned that some of the people here could start murdering at any moment," Ed noted. "Who?"

"Well, there are some trained assassins that came here. There are some other military personnel who had grudges against other people in the room. I don't doubt that there's other people who have unknown reasons but would still want to perform some murders." The general grimaced. "This is probably one of the most dangerous places to be right now, especially considering that it's taking place on an island that takes hours to get a boat out and that has too much turbulence with the storm to call for a plane. Any help that's called for will most likely arrive too late."

A scream punctuated his sentence.

* * *

><p>People rushed towards the sound, only a couple shying away. The scream had come from down in a cellar, and the mass flocked toward it. A maid was standing with her back pressed against the wall, hands over her mouth. A broken wine bottle was on the floor, having appeared to be just knocked over. As she heard the sound of people coming down the stairs, she pointed at something on the floor.<p>

A burnt corpse.

Murmurs immediately broke out, but no one was surprised of a death during the evening. It had been expected. The people in the stairs filed down, the mood shifting from an easy-going party attitude to one of calculation as the attendees tried to determine who did it.

Unfortunately, the burnt corpse pointed towards one person in particular.

Muttered accusations toward Mustang were already being made, while the four Amestrians scrambled to come up with a reasonable excuse. Someone voiced their person of interest for the murder louder than the others, making themselves clearly heard. The cellar went dead silent as they waited for the response. People parted slightly, making the way between the accuser and the one being accused clear. One was glaring, the other simply looked calculating, trying to determine what had really happened.

However, it was not Mustang who cleared his name.

"He didn't do it." In the silence, the calm sentence reached everybody's ears.

Heads turned, and bodies shifted to find the source of the voice. Someone responded, "Why not?"

By then, a circle had been cleared around a teenager, about fifteen, who was standing within a few feet of the body, nonchalantly looking at it. He glanced back up, surveying the crowd. "He didn't do it, because he couldn't have." The blond pointed a finger at the center of the body, and then drew the observer's attention to a spot where steam was rising from the body. "This was recent, within the last few minutes or so. A bad framing job. He was upstairs for the past half hour, and I'm sure enough people can vouch for having seen him during the time this was done. Am I not correct?" he challenged.

Several murmurs of people admitting having seen him broke out.

"Exactly. Besides, the only way out of here other than up the stairs is through that door." The teen pointed towards a door at the back of the cellar. "It leads outside, where it's raining." He paused to let everyone here the sound of water hitting the roof. "He'd be wet, which he's not."

Someone called out, "He's an alchemist, he could've dried himself off!"

"Yes, he could've." The boy nodded. "But he can't teleport. We're about thirty feet underground right now, would you say?" He looked at the maid, who nodded. "The ground around us is solid cement, and the first level is twenty feet above ground." At the confused looks that were given him as the numbers didn't add up, he explained, "The stairs go up ten feet." Continuing, he said, "He'd have to tunnel through all that to get back in, and alchemy causes what looks like electrical sparks, does it not?" The question was directed at the Amestrians. The brothers nodded.

"If you were to dig through that much crap, you'd cause flashes around the alchemy large enough that an entrance into that hall," Ed waved his hand upstairs, gesturing to where everyone had been gathered before, "would've caught everyone's attention."

The other teen nodded, having expected that from what he'd heard. "Exactly. Therefore, the general's innocent, and we should work on finding out who really performed the murder."

"But before we do that," someone called out, "can we find out who's idiotic idea it was to get a bunch of murderous bastards together on an island miles away from help?"

Nobody was insulted, and a few laughs and chuckles broke the tension.

* * *

><p>Ten minutes later, and the butlers were moving around, getting everyone's alibis and checking them with other people. Alex sat on the steps of the stairs that led to the second floor, which had the balcony he'd been leaning on. He was waiting for one of the butlers to take him off to where the other people with no alibi were being held. Eleven others were already there, other anti-social people, a few who had been checking the mansion to be sure of no security breaks for paranoid reasons, and the few who had stayed behind when everyone else had gone to check out the scream (since they could've been sneaking back in from the rain). The two of them were released when it was realized that nobody was wet, so nobody could've taken the back door out. Everybody but one was accounted for.<p>

Jones arrived next to him. "You drew attention to yourself," she commented.

Alex shrugged. "Had to."

"No, you didn't. That was a security risk by doing it." It wasn't an accusation, but merely stated out of curiosity.

"I did. Most of the people here are not able to find out who the murderer is if this person is skilled. They can. Besides, if he'd been shuffled off, we'd have so much political crap flying around that it would block out the sun. It also would've taken suspicion off the real murderer." Alex leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, watching the proceedings below. "It doesn't look like they have any new leads down there."

"I'm surprised you're not trying to find out who did it."

Alex shrugged again. "Not going to be able to. I'll with the other suspects in a minute or so. No alibi. I wasn't talking to anybody up there." He gestured towards the balcony. "If I escape from holding it'll just cause more problems."

Jones nodded. "Any thoughts on who did it?"

"I think the question is more of who couldn't have done it. There are so many people here who had motive and method it's insane. Besides, this method of finding out who had an alibi is useless. The murderer could've just joined everybody who went to investigate the scream. It was packed in there; nobody would've noticed somebody join the group."

A butler walked up towards them. He nodded respectfully at both, and asked, "If I may ask, where were you two within the minutes before the murder?"

Jones pointed out somebody she had been talking to, and the butler said that the person had confirmed that. Alex sighed, and gestured at the balcony. "Nobody was up there with me."

The butler nodded, but didn't make a move to take him down with the others. "Misters Edward and Alphonse Elric both recall seeing you up there in the minutes before the murder, and never saw you come down. One more question, if you please. We're putting together a search group to find out who committed these crimes, since we can't get this many people to agree and it will be easier to work with people who know what they are doing. Who would you suggest?"

Jones said, "General Karret and Minister Smith."Obviously, both names were aliases, but the butler still knew who she was talking about.

"Brigadier General Mustang and the people who work with him," Alex said. Alchemists were smart from what he'd read, and you also couldn't be an idiot to get that far up the ranks.

"Thank you both for your time." The butler departed back down the stairs.

Surveying the crowd, he found the quartet of Amestrians again. "Guess it's a good thing in more ways than one that I helped him out."

"I guess it is," Jones agreed. "We should probably move down now."

"Yes." Alex stood, and said, "I think there are going to be several disguises coming off tonight including my own. Several people have already recognized each other, and some people just want this over. It's going to be an interesting night." At the stairs, the two went different ways.

A different butler slipped over to Alex. "Mister Jonathon Young?" he asked. Alex nodded, still under the alias. "There's been another murder. Can you please come this way?"

"Sure, why?" he asked as they walked behind the stairs to a pair of double doors.

"You were recommended for the search team. Many times," the butler responded. Alex nodded, having guessed as much after his performance in the cellar.

The butler led him to a room, where several other people were already waiting and talking. Alex recognized General Karret, and nodded at an assassin who he knew.

"Glad to see you could join us," a cheerful merchant/spy/informant Alex had met before said, practically landing on him. The merchant pulled him in to the room, introducing him excitedly to everyone while ignoring Alex's protests that he knew everybody already.

"Hue, there's a _body_," one of the other people in the room said with exasperation. "Can we all please concentrate? _Please_?"

Thomas Hue sulked. "You're no fun, Wrong." He turned to the butler. "Do we have anyone else coming?"

"Ah, yes. Four more."

"The Amestrians, correct?" Amanda Wrong asked. The butler nodded in an affirmative. "That's good." Alex wasn't surprised that no one was protesting the idea of the original suspect joining the case. The people there were intelligent, and knew that the more help they add the better. If the people joining the case were murderers, then they could hopefully catch them even faster instead of having to chase them around the place.

Seconds later, and the two adults entered the room, looking around. They appeared slightly confused that no one was accusing them.

Thomas excitedly jumped on them. Slinging arms around both of their shoulders and pushing them forward, he happily introduced everyone to them all over again.

"_Now_ can we get started?" Amanda asked. In all seven people were in the room. Alex Rider, spy; Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, Vyacheslav Karret, military personnel; Amanda Wrong, assassin; Thomas Hue, informant; and Annike Kjellin, coroner. All of them could have committed the murder. That's why they were there.

"Sure, sure!" Thomas said, disengaging himself from the Amestrians. "Okay! So who's our unlucky victim this time?" He leaned down, putting his hands on his knees as he peered at the body. "And last time, for that matter?"

"This time it's Januario Hagadorn. The last murder we weren't able to get a definite name put to since the body was so burned, but Vicente Kempshall is the only person unaccounted for. Until further evidence is brought forth, we'll just assume it was him," Annike started. "The first time, something that went unnoticed was a few drops of blood behind one of the wine bottle racks, and an indent in his head. Someone hit him with something, probably one of the wine bottles, and killed him before burning him in an attempt to frame the Brigadier General." She nodded at Mustang.

"How is that helpful?" Vyascheslav asked, albeit not rudely. Now was not the time to be arguing, and they all knew their trades. It would be best to assume the others knew what they were doing.

"Well, from the angle of the blow, I'm guessing they knew where to hit. So someone who knew how to kill," Annike explained. "They knew a broken wine bottle would've pointed suspicion away from Mustang. The only problem that occurred was that he had an alibi. Which makes Rider the next target, or someone who'll turn up dead sometime soon."

Alex nodded. He'd messed up enough people's plans to expect that he would have someone attempt to murder him if he did it again. Same old, same old. He didn't bother mentioning that all of them had been under disguise and yet none of them were even bothering to conceal that they knew who the others were. "And Kempshall's death?"

"Bullet to the torso, which is not helpful," she said, muttering the last part. As a further statement, she said, "Most people aim for the torso instead of the head, and a smart murderer would do the same even if they were a sharp shooter to draw attention away from themselves. Also, who here does not have a gun on them? Be honest. We're all going to need one under these circumstances anyway."

None of them spoke. All of them were armed.

Mustang shrugged. "Not sure if I count there. I don't have a gun, but it's not like I need one either."

"Which brings up a point," Amanda reminded. "Almost everyone here tonight came with someone else. Whoever did this could be working in a group, so the alibis can't be expected to be accurate. Also, I'm trying to think of someone who _couldn't_ have done this, and it's not coming. As someone so eloquently put it in the cellar, we're a 'bunch of murderous bastards'. So while we're doing this, we should be looking for the people who couldn't have done this. I mean, for God's sake, we can't even eliminate the teenagers since it's known that Rider's a trained assassin!"

Alex nodded in agreement to the assassin part. "Actually, by looking at who couldn't have might take some of us out already. Kjellin, where was the blow on the first victim?"

The coroner picked up where he was going with the question. "The soft spot where the neck and the head merge. He was six feet eight inches. Not everyone would be able to reach that height and get that angle of the blow. That culprit was adult, and probably male." She glanced at him, and said apologetically, "Sorry, but none of you under twenty-one are exactly tall."

Alex shrugged. "It helps with my job. Do you know the caliber?"

"Pretty big bullet, which again doesn't help. A smaller bullet would have been used by someone sure they were going to hit their target, but someone smart would've used a bigger one to throw us off. The caliber was a .45. Most common in handguns." She paused, and then amended with exasperation, "Unless you work in a business like the kind most of us do, in which case your gun could probably be just about anything."

"Who votes that we don't do this kind of party again?" Thomas asked.

Murmurs of agreement came from all around.

"Back to the corpses," Annike reminded. She moved closer to the body, looking from it to the wall behind it. "This looks to be the same person. Or maybe we have two adult men working together, I don't know. Anyway, unless fired oddly-which God knows this person would probably do just to piss us off further-this was done by someone who fired in the usual stance, and from the way the bullet entered the body it exited the gun at the same height as the other man."

"So assuming that this person doesn't exist to irk us, we're looking for someone who's adult, male, carrying a gun capable of firing a .45, and roughly…" Thomas examined the body through critical eyes for a second. "…six foot three or four. Anything else?"

Shakes of the head.

"Good! Now where's the next body?" Thomas enthusiastically asked.

Hawkeye raised an eyebrow. "The next one?"

"The bodies are showing up pretty fast, aren't they? There's probably another one lying around here somewhere." He shrugged.

Annike shook her head. "Judging from how old this blood is, this corpse was made at the time the party started. So if the same patterns kept, we had anywhere from a half hour to an hour after the maid found Kempshall."

"So, any time now," Thomas sweetly reminded. The coroner shot him a venomous glare.

"Assuming we won't all be dead by the time by the time we can leave, shouldn't we think about who these two were mad at and who was mad at them in return? Or who would profit from their deaths?" Vyascheslav asked.

"Hagadorn was an intelligence officer for Brazil. I don't doubt he got his fair share of enemies. Here with his wife. That's all I know about him," Amanda volunteered.

"He turned in an assassin a while back," Thomas said thoughtfully, tapping his chin. "That might've ticked off some people. He caught some glitches in his own system, and trailed it back far enough to realize that someone was sending out a coded message to someone. He got a code breaker on it, and they found the assassin's location. The sender was never caught."

"Kempshall was the scientist who discovered the connection between the parallel worlds," Mustang offered. "He studied it for a few years before working with the team of scientists to get a portal open between them."

No one else knew a thing about him.

"So we might want to look some more into Kempshall. He might've been the most liked person here, since your country hasn't been here long enough to make any serious enemies," Alex said, and then reconsidered. "Or you must _have_ made some enemies, since someone tried to frame you."

"Unless they were framing the most convenient person," Hawkeye replied. Alex nodded in agreement. "You're right, though. I can't think of anyone who we've seriously argued with, but we have made a lot of allies."

"Anything else for us to consider?" Thomas asked. "No? Okay, then we should head out and ask our people to see if any of them knew anything."

"Maybe he found out Hagadorn was going to be murdered," Amanda wondered aloud. "Or he wasn't supposed to be murdered, and the murderer mistook him for someone else."

"There's a few possibilities. If we're all agreed on asking around, head out and look for people who look like Kempshall. Also, if two people could stay behind, and put people together in groups, that would be great," Annike said. Before anyone could ask, she answered the question. "In case someone murders again, it'll be harder to do it when there's groups. Groups of four to six. Don't put people who came together in the same group, unless you need to. If someone has to go to the bathroom, damn it, someone has to go with them! As for us, we'll count as one big group."

"I do this sort of thing all the time, and questioning people sounds boring." Thomas shrugged.

"I was never a social person and I'd probably bring across an aura of wanting to shoot them," Amanda said cheerfully. "They wouldn't be far off, but I'm guessing that we want calm people, right?"

"Right. You two stay here," Annike said. "Why am I doing all the work?"

"Cause you're doing a good job at it and not really letting anyone else do anything?" Alex suggested. He beamed as she gave him a death glare.

The group split, going their own ways. The ones who started questioning the other attendees went in pairs, and made sure to tell everyone that they were all going to be in different groups so they could look for a reaction.

By the time they reconvened, in a room that didn't have a body, the two making the list were done.

"Okay, who got something on the guy?" Thomas asked, clapping his hands together. "Anybody? Anybody? Anything?"

"Shut up and let someone speak," Amanda crossly responded. Alex remembered that he had once accidentally caught someone she had been trying to catch. Thomas wisely quieted down, not wanting to cross the assassin again at a party where everyone seemed to be dying. How they'd made it without Thomas ending up dead after being along in the same room with the assassin for ten minutes, the world would never know. Maybe he was a zombie.

"His fellow scientists didn't like him too much, and he had an ego and attitude that could kill a lion. It wouldn't be surprising if he made some enemies," Hawkeye reported.

"Sound like anyone you know?" Mustang muttered to her.

Vyascheslav took it from there. "We heard that he did. A rival organization lost a lot of money when Kempshall's suddenly made the breakthrough. One of their lead scientists is here. Doesn't have the height or build to be able to take out either person, however."

Alex shook his head at the same time Amanda said, "He didn't need to." The two glanced at each other, unsurprised, and the woman waved at the teen to continue.

"There are plenty of assassins-or people trained as assassins-who could have been hired. This party isn't exactly full of unicorn-trainers," Alex explained.

"Although I'm sure some of them could train unicorns to kill. I mean, what's a better weapon then a knife attached to your head? I'll bet no one would try to head-butt you!" Amanda thoughtfully said. The others chose to ignore that comment, although it briefly occurred to Alex that maybe Smithers had created something like that and named it after unicorns.

"Okay, so if the scientists hired someone, we need to look at the hirable people here," Vyascheslav said, redirecting the conversation. "That doesn't do much to help."

"Especially since most of the people here were trained to be assassins in some way, shape, or form." Alex rubbed his head. "Well, Wrong and I can go talk to all of them and figure out who did it if it was done by an assassin. We'll charge the scientist with murder if it turns out that's what happened."

"You expect them to tell you if they were hired?" Hawkeye incredulously asked. Most of the people here looked as approachable for a conversation as a rock did.

He nodded with a small shrug. "The ones here have their pride, and are not people who wait on their buyer's beck and call. If someone were to make a last minute request for an assassination, that would certainly irritate me. They would still do it if the money was good enough, but they would not be happy, to say the least. If we ask them if they murdered them, the assassin will easily give the buyer away. It'll teach the buyer and everyone else a lesson: they act of their own accord, and do not cross them. Of course, if the assassin fesses up we won't be able to arrest him, but we'll still have the buyer."

"Why can't we arrest the assassin?" Annike asked.

"They'll be gone," Amanda answered. "Shortly after we talk to all the assassins, in fact, they'll start dropping off the map to protect each other and themselves if one of them was hired. They know they'll be suspected of murder, and they probably all have places to be, so they can't be sitting in holding when we finally can get out of here. When should that be, by the way?"

"In the morning when the boaters can see and the tide isn't a problem for them. So we've got about ten to twelve hours."

"Oh damn."

One of the butlers hastily knocked on the door. Thomas, leaning against the wall beside it, casually threw the door open without moving from his spot. The butler barely glanced at him before addressing the room. "There's been another murder."

* * *

><p>Mutterings were breaking out across the room. After they'd been separated into their groups by the two people who had exited from the room the investigators were using for their collaboration, the group had hurried off somewhere, presumably to another murder. Edward noticed that another group other than the ones that had been reduced because of the murders and the people on the search team only had one less person than it should've had. The person must have gone missing before the groups were put into play.<p>

Across the room, he saw Alphonse. The younger brother caught his look, and waved. Ed responded, and then nodded his head toward a closing door where the investigators had just entered a room. Alphonse solemnly nodded in return. He knew what was going on.

After about half an hour later of not paying attention to the other people in his group, and the lights went out.

Surprisingly, no one screamed. Instead, the whole room went silent, waiting for the electricity to come back on. The people in the room weren't ones to panic over small things such as the electricity going out in a hall where someone else was a murderer.

"Well this sucks!" the same person as last time said loudly. A few people snickered, Edward including.

Until he felt something tug at his arm. He instinctively yanked it away, but the grip hardened and started pulling him somewhere. Instinctively, he swung a fist, aiming for the other person's face. It would really have been a lot easier if he could see what he was doing. The other person, having night vision goggles, grabbed his wrist, and yanked it around onto his back. One arm wrapped around both of his, pinning them both together. Another arm went around his mouth.

He lashed out with his feet, causing the person behind him to move fast to dodge and not take them both to the ground. Ed lashed out in a backwards move of a roundhouse kick, but before it could connect a voice hissed in his ear, "Would you stop that? It's me, damn it!"

Confused, he stopped. "What the hell are you doing?" he responded.

"You were too close to your group for me to talk to you. We have five more minutes until the lights come back on. Your brother's already out of here. Come on, I need to talk to both of you."

* * *

><p>Names and lines had been written and drawn all over the wall, enticing much discomfort from the house's staff. The victims and those who could have committed the murder were interconnected, with x's on some parts as someone was cleared. The other assassins had all been spoken to, clearing the scientist and anyone who would've hired them, since the guest list had been unknown to everyone but the person who had all invited them there. So far, it seemed like that was the person who was their murderer, since they had no idea who they were.<p>

The latest body had been hung. After Annike got everything she needed, the butlers cut it down and put it with the other bodies. Again, the person had been the same height.

At this rate, nobody could have committed the murders.

Except for one person. Alex sighed to himself, knowing that they'd caught the murderer. However, he wished they were wrong, since that would mean that he would've been right in the cellar. At this rate, Brigadier General Mustang would be charged with murder as soon as they could get back on mainland.

But why? He had no reason to do it. He didn't even know some of these people. Had he been trying to cover something up?

The butler reappeared, silently as always, over Alex's shoulder. "None of the assassins are missing," he reported.

Vyascheslav nodded. "Thank you." Not that it would really matter anymore.

Suddenly, Alex knew. It hadn't been the general. He had been framed as the most convenient person, and everything else had pointed to him through a fifty-fifty chance. No, he hadn't done it and he couldn't have done it, because someone else did.

And Alex knew who and why.

"Mr. …" he trailed off, not knowing the butler's name. Skipping over it, he continued. "Did the staff have the guest list?"

Everyone in the room had their attention on him.

The butler nodded slowly. "Some of us knew who all were on the list. Not many of us, though. The others didn't know where we kept the list."

"But someone could've ratted it out, right? Or stolen it?" Alex pressed.

"Yes, I suppose so."

Alex nodded his thanks, and the butler left the room.

"That was something to keep in mind," Amanda said. "Now, Annike, since you seem to be planning everything out, what do we do next?"

"Catch the killer," the coroner responded bluntly. "Does anyone have any ideas?"

"What if we go in pairs and come up with a plan between them? The murderer could be among us, so we don't want them knowing what everyone else is planning. If any of us make a breakthrough, we'll report it to the others," Alex said.

"You're right," Amanda said. "We don't want the murderer knowing what we're doing. Okay, Hue and Rider work together, Karret, Kjellin, and Mustang, and Hawkeye and I. Everyone good?"

Alex didn't miss the meaning behind sticking the Flame Alchemist in a group with two others and the person who had come with him paired alongside the assassin. She might've even stuck her in a group with Alex if she hadn't wanted to be stuck with Thomas.

"Alright, then. Everybody, away." Annike made 'shoo, shoo!' gestures with her hands.

* * *

><p>Thomas and Alex slipped into an empty room. "Well, I hadn't really thought this night would turn out like this, but it's becoming quite interesting, don't you think?" Thomas asked.<p>

"Yes… Don't you think it's interesting that none of us were suggested for this?" Alex bluntly asked. Thomas blinked in surprise. "None of us were requested to be on the investigation team. Maybe once or twice, but not for the majority."

"Then why are we all here?" Thomas asked, becoming serious.

"Because the murderer wanted us all here. There are seven investigators here, _trained_ investigators. Almost everyone voted for them but those who knew they would be voted for, so they voted for others to make a variety."

Thomas caught on. "The murderer didn't want anyone who could catch him working on the search team."

"Right."

"Well, that's mean. He doesn't think we can do this. Let's prove him wrong. So he stuck us together, us in particular, because we would've been less suspicious than anyone else, right?"

"Yes. He didn't want people to be too suspicious."

"Know how they managed that? These butlers look like they won't take bribes."

Alex cocked his head, waiting for the merchant to figure it out.

Thomas narrowed his eyes in response, thinking. Then it clicked, and his eyes widened. "Oh. Oh… That makes so much sense! And no one would've suspected him either…"

"Nope. This guy's plan was genius, I'll give him that. Sadistic, but genius. And so was his partner."

Thomas paused, then admitted, "I feel so sorry for _your_ partner. Do you always do this to him?"

"All the time. I'm testing him. It makes him smarter."

"I'm sure it does. But I'm not. Who was the accomplice?"

"Think. He wasn't down there when the first murder occurred."

"You're right…! So then the person who killed our first person was…Oh, that's _sneaky._ No one would've suspected either of them! I wouldn't have unless you came up with it! How did you?"

"We all thought that Mustang was the murderer, didn't we? I didn't think it would be, since he had brought two teens with him. I read through some files; he wouldn't want to expose them to anymore murder than they've already been exposed to."

Thomas punched one hand with the bottom of his fist. "The Fullmetal Alchemist! I remember reading something about him! Damn, I should talk to you less. I feel so stupid right now."

"It would've taken me longer if I hadn't been thinking about how he'd done it at the same time the butler walked into the room, and given me the information I needed."

Thomas frowned. "Everyone thinks that the general's the murderer, so they won't assume the real murderer, who'll be hard to talk to without him overhearing…" Something else clicked into place. Thomas's eyes widened. "You bastard. You stinking son of a bitch!" Alex grinned, and Thomas replied likewise. "You're playing us like puppets! You knew exactly what we would do if you said that we should split up!"

"You were the most likely person who would talk to me. And we need solid evidence instead of guesswork to catch him, so we need to come up with a plan. What would clear Mustang and catch the guy?"

Thomas tapped his chin. "You know, I might have an idea…" He told Alex.

And then the lights went out.

* * *

><p>"We have another murder," Amanda said, sticking her head in the now-lit room. Alex and Thomas nodded, leaving. "Attempted murder, actually," she further explained, walking fast. "Stabbing to the abdominal area. The murderer misaimed, and the person might live. We're sending out emergency signals to try to get the person immediate help. The storm's dying down, so some of them got through. Hopefully someone will be on the way shortly."<p>

"If he lives, he might've seen the murderer," Thomas urgently said, exchanging a look with Alex.

"Maybe. We'll just have to see."

They continued to the room, where blood was splattered all over the floor. A man was lying on the floor, unconscious, while Annike leaned over him trying to help the blood loss. Occasionally, she gave a direction to Vyascheslav, while Mustang and Hawkeye stayed back. They glanced over at the three entering the room, and then looked back down to the man.

A few minutes later, and Annike announced, "Everybody, out! But Karret." The others exchanged puzzled glances. "You're watching me do this. It's creepy."

They filed out, and Alex said, "Let's return to the original room, where we had the graffiti over the walls. Come on, we can take the stairs the butlers take; it'll be faster." He led the way, the adults trailing after him.

A butler ran up the stairs, on a collision course with them. They stopped and started to move to let him pass, but he was headed towards them to deliver a message. "The Elric brothers have been reported missing," he panted. "They disappeared when the lights went out."

Amanda flickered a glance at the Amestrians, and cautiously said, "Do you think they're…?"

Mustang looked undecided, but settled on an unconcerned expression and sighed. "They're probably doing something ingeniously stupid that'll work but in the process blow up half the building. I'm saying that from past experience." Hawkeye nodded in agreement.

They kept moving, the butler walking ahead of them this time since there wasn't anywhere else for him to go. He opened the door to the kitchen, and started to walk around the counter top to get to the other side of the room. A yelp escaped him, and he jerked back and hit the wall. Alex dodged around him, looking to see what had startled the man.

Edward and Alphonse were sprawled on the floor. Blood splattered the cabinets near them and over the countertops, almost too much blood than could've humanly escaped their bodies. Some of the drawers were open, and pans and pots had been knocked over during a struggle. And blood was over everything.

Alex rushed forward, checking both boys' vitals. He looked up, pale-faced, at the others and shook his head. Amanda ran past the counter, on the opposite side of the bodies, and left the room, looking for someone heading away from the kitchen past the door. The butler watched the situation nervously and with confusion. Thomas headed back up the stairs to alert the other two of the new murders.

Mustang and Hawkeye simply stood there, looking stricken. The two teenagers they had recruited, worked with, fought beside, learned from, and protected from dangers in the military whose existence had never crossed their minds-dead. Both of them were dead with absolutely no warning whatsoever.

And dead from what? A mad murderer, running amock in the building while Hawkeye and Mustang were supposed to be catching them. They'd survived a war with near-immortals, and they died _after_ they'd accomplished their goals and finally been able to return home? The Truth must be a sadist. And as if to rub salt into their wounds, their deaths would've been prevented if they hadn't thought it would be a good idea to bring someone along to prevent something like this from happening.

Just from kneeling there, Alex's pants were already soaking up blood. He stood, and backed away from the bodies. He murmured, "I'm sorry," but the Amestrians were lost in their own world.

Thomas came down the stairs. "Kjellin says she'll be down here once she's done with the live person. In the mean time, let's move away from here."

Neither of them moved.

Thomas grabbed both of their arms, and started to forcibly move them away. Mustang started to yank his arm back in anger, but the other man gave him a cool look of warning. "There's nothing you could do. The other people who died have people thinking the same thoughts you are, but there's absolutely nothing you can do but catch the bastard now. Do you understand?"

Hawkeye reluctantly nodded, and walked past him to where the stairway was, out of sight of the bodies and the blood. Mustang slowly followed.

Thomas pulled Alex along after them, and Amanda joined them when she got back from looking for anyone suspicious.

The solemn group waited for the coroner, numbly. Amanda and Thomas had come to an unspoken truce, not wanting to bicker over trivial things like normal in front of the two mourners. Alex sat on the steps, arms folded over his arms, and his head resting in the make-shift pillow on his knees. Mustang leaned against a wall, deep in thought. Hawkeye stood behind him, also lost in her own world.

Both of them were obviously in pain.

Annike passed them, giving the pair a sympathetic glance, and headed down to the bodies. A few minutes passed before she returned. "They died recently. In the time span of when we were in the pairs and trio. Which means that clears you two. Again. But permanently this time." She was looking at the Amestrians.

Neither of them looked surprised. They'd put together why they were in the groups they'd been in and why they'd split the groups up.

"Let's head back to the drawing room," Amanda suggested. They walked back up the stairs, and met up with Vyascheslav.

"The staff will take care of him," he simply said.

Alex tugged Thomas back from the others, who didn't notice as they dropped behind. He murmured something anxiously to him, and Thomas responded with a disgruntled expression. The teenage spy said something else, and pressed a piece of paper into the merchant's hand. Then he spun on his heel and walked away from the group.

Thomas caught up to them, pocketing the piece of paper. Vyscheslav turned slightly as he did, and raised a questioning eyebrow. "He went to change," Thomas explained.

* * *

><p>Half an hour later, and no progress had been made. Help was on the way for the victim to the knife wound, and hopefully adequate investigative help would arrive with it.<p>

Finally, Thomas spoke up. "When we were in the pairs…" he started, gaining the others' attentions, "Alex pointed some things out." Just then, they realized he was missing. Annike started to order a search, but Thomas cut her off, still speaking slowly and like he expected something to jump out at him. "Like, that none of us could've been actually appointed to this position other than Annike, since she's a coroner. There are private investigators here specially for murder, for God's sake! Why would they suggest us? Most of us kill people for a job!" Amanda nodded in agreement. "And he also said who he thought it was, but after the murder of the Elrics it couldn't have been. And it wasn't Mustang and Hawkeye, just so you know. If it becomes relevant who he thought it was, I'll tell you later.

"However, after the murder he told me he thought he knew who the real murderer was, so he left to go find out if he was right. He said if he didn't make it back," Thomas continued, pulling the piece of paper out of his pocket, "and was found dead where only a butler or a maid could've been, then something that would only identify the two culprits would be in here." He waved the piece of paper. "He hasn't come back."

"Was he stupid?" Amanda demanded. "Why the hell didn't he take anyone with him?"

"Because he thought that the murderer would be able to take down multiple people. After all, they took out two trained alchemists. From what I've heard, that was no small feat. And I think he was feeling guilty. When the lights went out, the murderer didn't pull them away from their groups. Rider did. He wanted to know two things. Whether or not they thought their superiors really could've committed the murders… and if they'd be willing to look around the place to see if they could find the murderer." Thomas rubbed his arm uncomfortably, obviously not wanting to incriminate the teen anymore. "It was the last one that killed them. That's why he was so affected by their deaths, but barely reacted to the others'."

"Let's go try to prevent that idiot from getting killed," Annike snapped, leaving the room. "And Hue? Don't be another idiot. We already have one, and don't need another."

A maid practically ran into her. "It was Mr. Guoy and Ms. Thrinsdale!" she squeaked out. Annike barely had time to ask a question before the maid blurted, "They were moving Mr. Rider's body away from a pile of blood, a-and he was dead, and there was no reason why they'd do that unless they were the murderers, s-so…" The maid was crying by then.

"Where are they?" Vyascheslav asked.

The maid pointed down the hallway from the direction she'd come from. "That way. In the room where we keep our cleaning supplies. I'll take you there, since it's impossible to get in there without being a member of the staff." She hurried off down the hall, and the group followed her.

At their arrival to the room, they saw that the first maid they'd seen and the butler who had kept reappearing were both lying on the floor, with other members of the staff holding them down.

Thomas opened the piece of paper.

**_The butler(s) did it!_**

_the maid who was alone in the cellar before everyone came down to see the cause of the scream_

_the butler who was running up the stairs from the scene of the crime by the kitchen _

**_smuggling_**

Thomas flipped the paper around, showing everyone else what was written on it. Annike looked from it to its writer, who was lying on the ground, a bullet wound in his stomach. He was curled around it, in obvious pain when he died.

"The person who figured it out is the last to die," she murmured, shaking her head sadly. "The only three people who get any real work done, and none of them make it to the end. What an ironic world we live in."

Mustang knelt beside the butler. "You killed everyone to cover up your smuggling operation, didn't you? While they were focused on the murders, you could move what you were smuggling around. And when we called in emergency help because you didn't fatally wound one victim, you could use that time to carry your smuggled items from the island."

The butler didn't respond, but looked around with hate in his eyes.

With a low, angry growl, the Flame Alchemist stood.

"Let's get these two into a secure area," Amanda said, and they hauled the two to their feet, "before any of _us_ kill them."

* * *

><p>Both murderers were carried away from the island in handcuffs. The wounded person survived through sheer luck. Amanda, having done something similar, realized that the knife had been poisoned so that the person would never wake up and be able to tell anyone who he saw, but would live long enough to allow them to call for someone to get help.<p>

The smuggled items turned out to be the poison used on the victim. It was 'disposed' of, but later nobody would be able to say for sure where it went to. Some organizations had gifts brought back from the party however, with no affiliation to the poison.

None of this mattered to the Amestrians. Someone opened a portal from the other side, and their subordinates came through, cheerfully oblivious of what had happened.

"Hey, you two!" Havoc said, leaning slightly on a cane. He'd gotten better at walking, but was still unsteady on his feet. "We somehow managed to get into a small bit of trouble even without you around, so you might have to sort that out, but otherwise everything's running smoothly."

"We decided to head over when we heard that something had gone wrong at the party," Falman explained, glancing over at where they were wheeling out a gurney. It was the first body that had been discovered. "Eesh. Bit of a mess here, huh? What happened?"

"Smuggling operation. Two of the staff killed people to cover it up," Mustang quietly said. He didn't add anything to it, and neither did Hawkeye.

With an edge in his voice, Fuery asked hesitantly, "Where's Ed and Al?"

Neither Mustang nor Hawkeye met their eyes. They hadn't even looked at them through the whole conversation.

"Oh God," Breda breathed.

Behind them, Ben gave them no notice, only filing away that he'd seen them. He walked past, heading over to where Jones was. "I heard."

"I'm sorry. We shouldn't have ever used him. It was wrong. And for it to end this way…" She shook her head. "You have a leave for however long you want within a reasonable amount of time."

Ben nodded his thanks. "Heard that he solved the murder before he died." Jones nodded, confirming it. Ben frowned slightly, having not expected her to nod. He looked up to where he knew they'd put all the bodies. He left without another word, starting to head up to the room. He passed Thomas Hue as he did, a merchant he and Alex had worked with once.

Then something struck him.

He turned back around. "Hue!" he called. The merchant turned around, head cocked. "How did he die?"

"Bullet to the stomach. I wish it had been less painful," was the response.

"And how did the other two teens die?" Ben pressed.

Jones walked up behind the merchant. "Agent Daniels, this is…" she trailed off, seeing that he was in the middle of something.

His eyes narrowed, waiting for Thomas's answer. "Knife stabbings."

"Only one stab each?"

"Right. Why?"

Ben stared at him in disbelief, and then looked back up to where the corpses were. He didn't speak for a moment, still processing the information, before letting out an exasperated breath of frustration and ran up the stairs. Knowing something was up, the others followed him.

Thomas had a smirk on his face.

Ben threw open the door. The bodies were on the floor, and Annike was in there. She looked up as they entered. "Ah, so you-"

Ben pushed past the now grinning coroner, and walked to his dead partner's side. "Alex, stop screwing around or I'm stepping on you."

Behind him, the Amestrians and MI6 deputy wondered if he'd lost it.

No answer from the body.

"Five… Four… Three… Two…" He raised his foot.

Alex shot up, scaring the shit out of the Amestrians.

He dodged out of the way of the foot. He rolled away, and gracefully used the motion to stand. "Have you ever heard of the term, 'respect your superiors'?" the teen spy demanded, although he was smirking in amusement.

"What about 'respect your elders'?" Ben shot back.

"Touché."

Edward's body, right next to Mustang, sat up. "I _told_ you there was too much blood!" Alphonse next to him nodded in agreement. "Anybody with common sense would know that from two stab wounds with the knife still in the body wouldn't be able to spray that much blood all over the place!"

The Amestrians were clearly startled out of their wits.

"What the hell kind of stunt is this?" Mustang shouted at the two. "I know you've done some ridiculous crap before, but what possessed you to try this?"

"It was your idea, wasn't it?" Ben snapped at Alex, tapping his fingers on his crossed arms.

Alex smiled. "Of course it was my genius plan. What tipped you off, by the way?"

"Your whole death. Unless someone dropped a bomb or missile directly on your head, I'm really beginning to doubt that anything's going to kill you," Ben responded. "So, what really happened?"

"Once extra bodies started showing up, the smugglers had to stop their operation," Edward explained, standing. "They were afraid someone else was killing people and trying to pin it on them. Halfway true, admittedly. So they stopped to try to find the other murderer before something unveiled them to be the real murderers. They caught onto Alex being the 'murderer', but weren't expecting him to drop dead. That being a commonly used area since bodies kept falling and someone had to clean them up, they had to move him."

"My reputation comes before me. If I'd died, then I would've probably done something to point to my killer. Fearing that, they tried to dump me somewhere no one would find me. However, someone spotted them. I'm not really sure how they were planning to move a body through a tightly secured and paranoid mansion in the first place, but whatever," Alex continued.

"Upon closer examination of the body, Ms. Annike noticed the same thing Nii-san pointed out," Alphonse said, picking up the story line. "There was too much blood. We'd done that for a few reasons. For one thing, you'd all be less likely to look closer at the bodies. For another, we could move around and then come back to our spots without anyone noticing something wrong with the body there would be so much blood. There's some blood trails along the halls we walked through, but we figured no one would be looking at them. Anyway, since Mr. Hue pulled everyone else out of sight, we could explain to her what we were doing."

"I figured it was worth a shot. We didn't have any better plans, and what did we have to lose? If they were wrong they could always stand up, shrug, and say 'well, that didn't work'. Besides, I wanted to know if it would work," Annike offered.

"How'd you figure it out?" Ben asked.

"The murderer needed to be able to do several things and have access to certain places. For one thing, they needed to be able to get into all the rooms. The cellar is impossible to get through unless you came in through the outside, which no one but the alchemists could've done because everyone was dry, tunneled through the walls, or come in through the regular door. While everyone kept doubting for whatever reason that I'd seen the alchemists during the time of the murder, they couldn't have done it leaving one of the staff, the maid in particular. However, she's tiny. Like, smaller than me. She couldn't have committed all of the other murders, meaning it was probably one of the other staff members. We were so focused on the attendees of the party that we forgot about the staff.

"Also, we weren't the ones who had originally been going to be on the search team. It was going to be seven other people. Since, as Thomas mentioned, the butlers were not going to be bribed, that meant it _was_ one of the butlers. All of them, actually. I think they're catching that now, so they're being arrested as well. The list of the people attending was known only by the staff, so they knew who to kill and who to frame. The staff was also the people who asked everyone here. The people who came here assumed that one of the others in the hall had invited everyone. In reality, the smugglers were being supported by funds from terrorist groups big enough to let them get away with faking it. When thought about, the only people it could've been were staff members," Alex finished.

"But she would've had to have been taller to kill the first victim," Hawkeye pointed out.

"There was a stool by the wine racks that she used to stand and kill him on. He must've come down to request a wine. Maybe he asked the butler first, who sent him down. She pulled a wine bottle off the rack and killed him with it. Remember the broken wine bottle? We heard her scream, but we didn't hear the bottle break. The door was completely closed when she killed him, but it was open a crack so someone could hear her scream later," Edward explained.

Jones frowned. "Wait. If all the doors were only accessible by staff, how did you get into the cleaning room?"

Alphonse took it from there again. "Remember how I said we were walking through the halls? We opened a door in the wall, made sure he looked dead, and then went back to the kitchen. No one thought to look for alchemical marks in the wall, but you'll find them along the bottom if you look."

"Why didn't you come out immediately after they had been apprehended and had admitted to the crime?" Mustang asked, having finally succeeded in suppressing the urge to strangle his subordinates.

Edward threw up both hands in a defensive gesture. "I was all for walking into the room and talking like we hadn't just faked our deaths to freak you all out-" Mustang's expression showed just how much he was helping the situation, "-but Alex didn't want to because he wanted to run a test."

"You wanted us to figure it out," Ben accused of his superior.

"Of course. It's my job as a teacher to teach you."

"And to be a bastard."

"That too. Besides, Thomas looked like he had fun acting." Across the room, Thomas grinned and nodded.

"Can we do it again?" the merchant asked. "This is kind of like _Clue_! Just… a lot more realistic. You know what, let's not do this again. Wrong would kill me off first."

"Yes, she would," Annike humorously said.

Ben sighed, rubbing his head. "Okay, you three, there's nothing we can really do to you but rant a lot, since you two aren't under him anymore and you're my superior officer." The three teens grinned, and Mustang groaned as he realized the agent was right. "So could you at least pull out those knives? That's kinda gory."

Edward turned his head weirdly, as if just now remembering he had a fake knife sticking out of his neck. Alphonse started working out the knots that were holding the one in his back in place. Annike tossed them all wet rags from a bucket, and they started washing off all the fake blood from the concoction Alex had made up. Before they'd been interrupted, they'd been planning to do that anyway.

"Well, it was a pleasure… sort of… to meet you," Ben said, shaking hands with Mustang while the teens continued cleaning off the blood. "Maybe we can work together again, minus the pesky idiots." By then Jones had left, not anticipating the amount of paperwork this was going to cause. The Amestrians had started to leave as well to wait for the brothers so they could leave.

"Yeah, maybe." Mustang threw over his shoulder, "You two feel like taking any longer or are you coming?" A wet rag hit him in the face.

Ben suppressed a snicker at the general's expression, and called to his superior, "Hey, puppet master! Feel like heading back home?"

"_What_ did you just call me?"

* * *

><p>an: This was a new kind of story for me to type out. Did you suspect who the murderer was? Did you not? Did you hate this? Did you like it? Well?

Sorry this took so long to get out, but… well… it was kind of long and I had other stuff to do. I finished NATOP! Yay! I'm going to be doing work for _Takanami_'s account, so this one might be a little dormant for a while except for this story, which I'll update when I feel like it.


	11. Awkward Beginnings

a/n: This chapter wouldn't have been posted or even thought up, but I had to do something. And that something, was to _give a birthday present to __**rainstripe**_! Happy birthday, girl!

* * *

><p>The two brothers cut across the road, hurrying towards the Central HQ. One was grumbling about the time at which they were being called in, and the other was making no attempt to calm him down. Three in the morning was a ridiculous time to be woken up at, let alone to be going to work at in a job were you're not paid because all your bosses finally realized what the phrase 'child labor laws' means. Half a year late, but still.<p>

"Why's he having us come in?"Alphonse asked. He'd still been asleep when Edward had answered the phone, but he'd been awoken when he'd heard the sounds of his brother whacking the phone off the bedside table, falling on the floor to retrieve it, and then finally answering the phone with swear words. The younger brother had never spoken on it during that time.

"Something about a terrorist organization… Can't remember their name…" At Alphonse's expression, he defensively said, "Hey, I was tired! It was three in the morning!"

"It was two-thirty then, because it's three now."

"Exactly my point! I had every reason to not be paying attention!"

"So… A terrorist organization? Why are they pulling us in for that? We're not very knowledgeable in that area."

"That's what I said," Edward said thoughtfully. "He said to come in anyway." After another second's ponder, he shrugged. "I don't know. We'll find out when we get there. It's not like what he does ever makes sense anyways."

Al rolled his eyes, and gestured toward an alleyway. "We can cut through there to get to the HQ faster. Come on."

"Although I'm not planning on seeing the general's face any sooner, the faster we get there the faster this is all over," Edward replied. "And don't you know that you're not supposed to go into alleys at night?" he jokingly prodded.

His brother let out a snort. "Any students of Izumi Curtis could go into _Hell_ and come back out unscathed. For we know the ways of the demons, and we have learned to walk among them in peace. Kitty!"

Edward let out a bark of laughter as Al shot around the corner after a cat he'd spotted. "Geez, Al, what're you going to do now that you can't put any in your armor?"

There was no response. His smile faded as he walked towards the corner. His footsteps hurried.

"What're you doing…?" He heard his brother ask someone, confused.

Ed turned the corner. Alphonse was standing around the corner, caught cat in his arms. By the other end of the alley, the silhouette of someone with a gun stood over a motionless body. The person glanced at him sharply, and Ed felt his hands instinctively come closer together to clap. He halted the motion, knowing it wouldn't do anything.

"Ah," the person said. It was male, and young. Early twenties, or in his teens. "This… is considerably awkward. And not what it looks like."

"Then what is it?" Ed demanded.

"…A misunderstanding." The teen started to kneel down beside the body, one hand reaching out.

Reflexively, Al shouted out, "Don't!" The person paused, half-kneeling, one hand reaching out and the other holding a gun. "Explain what happened."

The teen seemed hesitant to do so. Without being rude, he asked out of curiosity, "Or what will you do?"

"We were already headed over to the military HQ. It won't be a problem to tell them about this encounter," Edward replied.

The smallest trace of humor entered the other's voice. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction the boys were planning to go. "Which is that way, past me. Tell them, and I'll be gone."

Al clapped his hands. The light from it illuminated the alley, allowing them to see the teen. He was short for someone that age, and had blond hair. He ducked and rolled as hands of stone came out of the ground around him. As he came to his feet, he threw himself over another pair as they came under him. "That is not fair!" he protested, dodging under another one.

Alphonse paused in his efforts. "Now would you mind telling us?" he asked.

"I only have a little bit of time, and it would take a longer amount to explain. I _can_ tell you, however, that the more noise and sound you make-"

"Increases your chances of getting caught?" Edward incorrectly finished.

"-Increases his chances of dying." The teen pointed at the body. He used the moment of surprise to edge backwards.

"He's not dead?" Al cautiously asked, glancing at the man on the ground. "You didn't shoot him?"

"No, I didn't. But somebody did, and they ran off before they could finish the job. Maybe something startled them, I don't know. Whatever the reason, they might come back."

"And you got the gun from where?" Edward prodded.

The teen glanced at it, as if having forgotten he'd still had it. "If you hadn't noticed, you're not in the best part of the city."

"We're not in the worst part, either," the elder brother shot back. "People don't walk around carrying guns."

"When they hear gunshots go off they do," the teen replied.

Ed was about to says something back when Al cut their argument off. "Enough! Both of you! If he's still alive, let's get him to a hospital!" The unknown teen's body language said he wanted to do anything but, yet he gave a hesitant nod.

He put one hand on a stone one, and swung himself over it to the other side. The two brothers followed him. Another gunshot went off, and the teen flinched, as if expecting to be hit.

"You're in some kind of trouble, aren't you?" Ed asked, having seen that reaction before from Mustang and Hawkeye in reflex to the Ishval war.

"I guess you could say that…"

"Something the police can't help with?"

"Or the military, no."

Ed nodded. "Scram."

The teen glanced back down at the body, and the two realized that he must be a friend of his since the two looked nothing alike. He looked back up at the brothers. "Take care of him." Then he was gone.

* * *

><p>While the mysterious man was operated on, the brothers headed over to the office where Mustang and his subordinates were. As they opened the door, they were greeted with flying papers and scrambling people, hurrying to get things done. More people were in the room than normal, and one of them left with a stack of paperwork in his arms.<p>

Mustang was the first to notice him. "You two took your sweet time! It's an hour after I called! Whatever, get out on the streets, we're looking for this man." He held up a picture. "We've got a pissed off agency missing two agents, and this is one of them. They're less worried about the other, but they think this one may be dead. If he is, we're in deep shit."

Ed smirked. "Well, while we were taking our 'sweet time', we ran across him." All motion in the room halted. Fuery teetered forward on one foot, and Falman paused midsentence. Heads turned towards him.

"And where is he now?" Mustang asked.

"Hospital, room 119." His triumphant smirk didn't lessen.

"Condition?"

"He's in operation right now, and he had a bullet wound when we carried him there. They think he'll live," Al said, taking over from his grinning brother.

The room, other than the questions and answers, was still dead silent. It was an eerie transition from the earlier state it had been in. "Was there anyone with him?"

"A teen, about our age. Blond hair, about as tall as Ed. He had a gun, but said he didn't shoot the man."

"Where's the teen?"

"He said he was in some kind of trouble the local police and military couldn't help with, so he left. He said to take care of him, the man, before he ran."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"No."

"How did you find them?"

"We were cutting through an alley to get here faster. They were in it. The man was on the ground, unconscious, and the teen looked like he was trying to figure out what to do."

"Was he injured?"

"Not that we saw."

Mustang snapped to his subordinates, and started barking orders. "Report that to MI6! Get the best medical treatment for Daniels. He dies, we're screwed. Elrics, go get Rider, the teen. He'll be less likely to shoot you. Tell him his agency needs to make contact with him. Get people out on the streets to look for Scorpia, and put guards up around Daniel's room in case any try to get to him." He continued issuing orders as the brothers hurried out of the room.

* * *

><p>"Well, that looked a little hectic in there. He's under some real pressure," Ed commented to his brother.<p>

"Yeah. Wonder what's going on…?" He pondered aloud.

The two wandered the streets for the next two hours. Light was beginning to hit the streets as they turned another corner. Through some weird chance, they had arrived at the same alley they had met the two at. With a hefty sigh, Edward fell on the ground into a sitting position. "Okay, we're a fugitive from something, we work for some sort of agency, and we're being chased by people trying to kill us."

"No we're not!"

"Just pretend. Someone we know, probably another agent, just got gunned down, and two strangers took him to a military hospital. He's out of our hair, so we now have to take care of ourselves. We need to make contact with the agency, since they don't know what happened. We can't go to the military or police because…"

"They might be the people we're trying to avoid, or working with them. Maybe they've been infiltrated," Alphonse said, thinking quickly.

Edward nodded. "Right. So, with all that in mind, where do we go? What do we do?"

Neither of them spoke, thinking. Alphonse sat down next to him.

"Well, do we know the city?" Al cautiously asked.

"Yes! We do. We knew where the military HQ was, at least," Edward said. "So we must know at least the basic layout."

"Do we know anyone here?"

Edward thought for a moment. "No, we most likely don't. We would've gone to someone we knew when our friend got hurt. Since we didn't, chances are we don't."

Al nodded. "Right. Well, wouldn't we leave the city, then? Our friend's being taken care of, someone in the city wants us dead, and we're going to have trouble contacting someone in the city without being found by the people hunting us."

"But… why are we here in the first place?" Ed asked. "Maybe we haven't finished that reason."

Neither could think of a reason off the top of their heads. "So, where would you go assuming you're still in the city? If you were leaving, it'd take you an hour, tops, to get out of the city from here."

"Which means he's either here or we're not going to find him." Ed stood. "I think I know where he is. Come on."

* * *

><p>"Why would he come here?" Al whispered. "This place is about to fall apart. We weren't too kind to it when we were last here."<p>

They continued walking forward, through the chambers underneath Central. The rooms were still as big as they had been, but crumbled pieces of the wall, ceiling, and flooring were scattered around. One room in particular was hard to get through, and the two had to jump over the white bodies of the immortal army the military had created to get through it. Nobody had bothered to destroy them, assuming they would rot away down there. Several more rooms passed beneath their feet, before Ed finally answered.

"Think about it. Look at how much hiding space you have down here." He gestured around them. "It'd be impossible to find you. Also, it's about to fall apart. Nobody would think to look down here unless they were crazy."

"You're calling yourself crazy?" Al responded, amused.

"Well-…yeah… We're down in an abandoned area that's about to collapse on us, and no one will find our bodies for years. And the reason it's about to collapse is because we had to kill off some near-immortal beings to stop them from destroying the country. Yeah, I'd say I'm crazy, but I'm not the only one!"

Alphonse let out a bark of laughter. "Why are we whispering?" he mock-quietly asked.

"Because the scary people after the one teen probably followed us and are waiting for us to find the teen so they can kill him," Edward 'whispered' back, making it known to the four people behind them and the teen hiding in the room what was going on.

"Right, so we're going to beat the crap out of them in a room about to fall apart? With a bunch of buildings on top of us?" Al summarized, giving up on whispering.

"Yup, that sounds about right. Why?"

"No reason, just wanted to make sure I had my facts straight."

"Anything you want to add to that?" Edward called out to the other people. The two turned around, back-to-back, covering the angles from which they could be approached.

"Yeah!" the teen, Rider, called out. "If you assassins wouldn't mind, I'm already having a bad day as it is, so it would be greatly appreciated if you could give me a day off."

A gun notably clicked off its safety.

"Or, you could be an ass and do that," Rider sighed.

Ed snickered. "The one time that bad guys agree with you is when you knock them unconscious. Then they don't really agree with you so much as have to go along with it."

"So true, so true…"

At once, the two brothers hit the ground, dodging under two bullets. They rolled opposite ways, and Ed ran towards where he'd heard Rider's voice come from. He dodged behind the barrier the spy was behind at the same time Alex pulled out his gun and returned fire.

"Okay," Alex started, planning to map out an escape plan for the two, "if you can convince your brother to-"

He stopped as a solid wall went up, effectively blocking any form of communication of bullets between the four assassins and the agent. "Well. That works too."

"Gotta love alchemy," Al agreed with a grin as he joined them. "Should we head to the office now?"

"The exit was that… way…" Alex started to gesture at the new wall, but trailed off at their expressions. "This is going to be hell on my stomach, isn't it?"

* * *

><p>The room was still swarming with people, and had only managed to get rid of five. A general entered, storming in with flair. Mustang looked up from the phone call he was making sharply, and saluted the general.<p>

"Brigadier General Mustang, do you understand the severity of this situation?" he barked, mistakenly assuming the general was on the line with a girlfriend from rumors he'd heard.

Mustang nodded, and pulled the phone away from his mouth to say, "Yes, sir." He pulled the phone back as he had to give an answer to the person on the line.

"Then get to work!"

"Sir," Hawkeye said, and the general's head whipped around to face her angrily. "He's on the line with the head of MI6."

The general paused, looking shocked. "He contacted you?"

"Yes. He's been wanting updates."

"Uh, and how are things looking?" The general had obviously been planning to storm in the middle of a badly operating system getting nothing done. He hadn't been expecting to storm into the middle of a highly operating system that had the head of a top agency on the line. He hadn't even been allowed to contact MI6 to find out what was going on.

"Do you remember the Elric brothers, sir?"

"Yes. The Fullmetal Alchemist and his brother." He didn't look happy at the mention.

"Yes. They were on their way here to help search for Rider and Daniels, and they ran across both of them. At the time they didn't know who they were, so they took Daniels to the hospital, and Rider ran off to get the Scorpia away from the Elrics and his partner. Once they reported in and learned what happened, they left again to find Rider, since he would know they are not Scorpia. Daniels is expected to make a full recovery, but is in the hospital. The mission they were sent on to get here has been completed, he reported, and wrote down the details for us," Hawkeye summarized. Before she could continue with the report, the general snapped.

"The Elrics! I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did!" Hawkeye remembered that he was one of the people who didn't really know what had happened. "Why didn't you send out real soldiers?"

"I can assure you, the Elrics are perfectly capable of tracking down and locating Rider, Sir."

Before the general or anyone else could make another comment, sparks of electricity flew from the wall facing the outside. Three teens hopped in through it, and Al transfigured the ground back to normal with a clap, and the wall back with another one.

"There are four very confused Scorpia agents you need to take care of down below your city, I believe," Alex pointed out with a smile.

The general looked stunned.

Mustang wasn't. "Oh, hi. Making an entrance as always."

"Better than you, lazing around as always," Edward tossed back.

"I'll have you know, we're actually doing _work_ here, instead of horsing around in the cellars of our city." Edward was about to protest that statement, but the sound of something crashing hard and destroying itself sounded from below. All of them looked down and towards the window the trio had entered towards, and also towards the direction of the sound.

"There goes the underground part of Central," Havoc stated calmly.

"Huh," Mustang said noncommittally.

"Never mind about the assassins, then," Alex said cheerfully. "It seems your natural barriers seem to be adequate for taking care of them."

Breda solemnly nodded. "We take great pride in our natural barriers that we didn't even know we had. Great pride, I can assure you."

"Why are the kids doing all the work?" the general interrupted. Everyone stared at him. "Well?"

"Because everyone else is busy doing the boring office jobs, so they send us young and energetic and boisterous kids out onto the street to get the hard and dangerous work done, since we can bounce back from anything."

The general searched Alphonse's face for a hint of humor or deceit. When he didn't see any, he moved on. Behind his back, Edward's face was an expression of pain from holding back laughter. Alex, next to him, was biting his lip and shaking. Mustang had an impassive one, knowing that if he even smirked he would start laughing. Hawkeye wasn't rolling her eyes through sheer will power.

"I leave this in your capable hands," the general said, and left with that, entrance ruined and out of statements.

Edward let out a small sound a second after the general left. Mustang made a few motions, telling without words that the general would be able to hear him if he started laughing now.

After a few more seconds, a small smile crossed Hawkeye's lips. Just as the four suppressing their laughter were about to burst, Hawkeye said, "Hobbits."

The floodgates burst.

* * *

><p>an: For those of you who haven't watched/read _Lord of the Rings_, Hobbits are the tiny people who aren't dwarves. Ed doesn't need to know that...


	12. My Duty Your Duty

a/n: I write whenever inspiration strikes, if you hadn't noticed. Sorry for the long wait, anyhow. But updates will probably be like this for this story from now on.

This was sort of the third chapter's first meeting, with the mentioned penny, fire, window, dog, and too much alcohol, but not necessarily in that order.

I don't own!

* * *

><p>"What are you doing here?"<p>

"What are _you_ doing here?"

"I've got business here! You best be somewhere else if you don't want to get hurt!"

A flashed watch. "We're military! ... I'm military. Al's sort of... a consultant? Whatever, we're supposed to be here. Scram."

"Can't. Waiting for someone."

"Wait somewhere else!"

"Nii-san..."

"How long do you need this area for?" the teen rubbed his head as he spoke. Due to protocol, he knew he bowed to superior powers in their country. That didn't mean he liked to, certainly not when was at a rendezvous point. The RV* was the roof of an out-of-the-way warehouse, tall enough to be hard to be hit by snipers and short enough that it wasn't obviously containing a illegal operation. An illegal operation that would be up in flames soon, albeit. He could only hope his partner would arrive before the place exploded. It was hard to find people in a crowd when there were loads of other onlookers peering at a fire.

It would be best to not let the teens across from him know any of that, even if they were military.

In fact, it had been a warehouse being supplied _by_ some military officers who were trying to make enough money to support a(nother) revolt. They didn't like the way things were going, and would prefer one of Bradley's supporters in charge. Not wanting to give away a contact, MI6 sent him to cause an 'accident' at the warehouse, and slowly crumble the officers' lives. Oh, and Ben was helping. But he didn't seem to be having nearly as much fun as Alex was.

Unknown to the spy, Edward and Alphonse were there because they needed to shut down the warehouse without causing a big scene. They also had an informant, a different one than MI6's, who's cover they didn't want to give away. Even as the two stood there, Mustang's team was deviously and irrevocably ripping the criminal officers' lives to shreds. As soon as the Elric brothers arrived at a warehouse in foreclosure to help sign forms, look! An illegal operation! What do you know! Who knew that that was there? Prison bars would be closing in a flash.

Edward gave an iffy shrug, before responding with, "How long are you going to need?"

Alex glanced at his watch. "Hm... He should've been here about a minute ago, so not much longer. But I don't think you want to be here when he shows..."

Although he still carried the State Alchemist watch, which Mustang had allowed for the sheer purpose of getting work done faster, Edward had retired from the military a year ago. Unknowingly, this put him and Alex at the same age. With his retirement, it also meant he had no real rules he had to follow. "Look, do you have any idea what's going on in this warehouse?" he asked.

"Nii-san! He told us not to let it known!" Al whispered quickly.

"He's got no control over me," his brother shot back.

"Well, in a sense he does, since you're carrying the State Alchemist watch," Alex objected. "I assume you're talking about the Major General?" At the brothers' expressions, he said, "Recognized you, guessed from there. You're here about the illegal op, too?"

"Yup. Can you go now?"

"Ed, you have no diplomatic skills!" Al groaned, feeling like he was the only one who stopped his brother from getting into even more trouble than usually appeared in front of him anyway.**

"I've got plenty of diplomacy," the elder disagreed, "I just have no people skills."

"Then we should get along perfectly. Now, about the operation below..." the spy across the roof from them said. "We've got about," another glance at his watch, "three minutes until it burns down. Something about faulty wiring and a dangerous chemical combination of stuff that the people in the illegal operation are making," he non-so-subtly hinted.

"...Who did you say you were, again?" Ed asked.

"Oh, someone from a spy agency." Alex shrugged it off.

"Spies were banned from the country for any reason with proper application," Alphonse pointed out.

"Didn't stop you from using one," Alex replied. "Besides, I don't technically exist. There is no me who could be a spy, so therefore, there is no spy in the country. I'd like to take credit for it, but our techies are geniuses. Anyway, shouldn't we be moving somewhere that won't be exploding soon?"

Five minutes later, the explosion went off elsewhere in the city. "That had absolutely nothing to do with us..." Alex muttered. "Well, nice meeting you." He waved a farewell at the two brothers, who responded likewise.

"Yeah, but you owe us!" Ed said. Alex smirked in response, knowing that fate would have its own way of letting him repay the ex-alchemist in full.

The three parted, and went their own ways.

* * *

><p>Alex sat in a restaurant, waiting. He was currently sitting in the backup RV, in case the first became unusable (i.e., if it suddenly became a big ball of fire). He twirled a penny he'd found on the table, watching it spin. The table behind him was occupied, and he listened to the conversation its occupants were having through boredom.<p>

"What happened to the original plan?" someone asked.

"For once, we didn't have anything to do with it," a younger voice responded. Alex paused, and the penny rolled to a stop. He recognized that voice. He shot a glance at the window, which reflected the image of the person back to him. Alphonse Elric. His brother was sitting beside him, and across from them was a prompt woman and a man, who somehow managed to wear his uniform with ease and still look slightly disheveled.

"A nice change, but we still need to file a report, even if it is false. It'd be best if we avoided what actually happened. To do that, we need your version of what happened," the man said. Their waitress had already come and gone, leaving them mostly free to talk. It wasn't like most people expected the person sitting in the table behind them would be a teenage spy trained to listen to everything.

Luckily, he'd already arranged a mutually beneficial agreement with the brothers that included a distinct lack of existence of the other in their reports. For both, they'd decided to go with the easiest thing.

"The chemicals they were using were mixed incorrectly, and caught fire. In minutes, the building wasn't even recognizable," Edward said, not seeming to be paying attention. "We got there about the same time the fire department did. We'll actually be able to put down an accurate account of what happened."

The man, who Alex assumed to be Roy Mustang, nodded like he believed it. Then he said, "Now, on a level of one to ten, just how much bull shit was that***?"

"Surprisingly, only about a seven. The rest we're sworn to secrecy about," Edward replied. "There's nothing else we can share."

"Huh..."

A dog licked Alex's hand. He glanced down, and smiled. He rubbed its head, and it sat down beside his chair. The dog gave a canine smile, and jumped lightly up. It rested its paws on his lap, and licked his face. Alex grinned, and scratched its ears. He cast a glance at the table the four military related people were sitting at, and noted that the woman had a leash laid across the back of her chair.

"Better go before she catches you," Alex whispered, gently pushing the dog down. The dog licked his hand once more, and then padded back to his table. Alex looked back to his table, and noticed that the remains of his burger had disappeared.

Ben sat down across the table from him. "Adopting a dog?"

Alex shook his head. "Nope. Not planning to. Unless it can shoot, in which case it will definitely be joining our dysfunctional and unrelated family."

"If the dog's shooting, we've got other problems right there."

"Yup. What took you so long?"

Ben grimaced.

"You were supposed to talk them out while they drank at the bar, and tease anything out of them." Alex noted Ben's flinch as sunlight glinted off a nearby glass in their direction. He laughed. "They got you to drink with them didn't you? Got a little hangover?"

"It's not funny." Ben rubbed his head.

"Sure. Of course not."

"Oh, shut up."

"What happened to you?"

"Everything went as planned."

Ben stared at him. "What?" he demanded, shocked. Alex raised a confused eyebrow. "Everything went as _planned_? Oh my God, that's scary. It means things are going right for once! There's something unnatural about that right there."

"Alright, let's go." Alex rolled his eyes at his partner's antics. He stood, dropping the right amount of money on the table, and started to depart from the table. A slight change of course allowed him to drop the penny he'd been twirling near Edward's elbow on the table without being noticed. He and Ben were out the door before Al nudged him, and gestured at the penny.

"When did that get there?" Hawkeye asked. "That's wasn't there when we sat down."

Ed looked up over it, through the window that looked out across the street. Alex disappeared around a corner as he did so. Ed redirected his gaze to Al. "He paid in full."

Al laughed.

Hawkeye and Mustang simply shrugged.

* * *

><p>*If you didn't know or hadn't figured it out, that's an abbreviation for rendezvous.<p>

**Someone would say that this is true. In fact, most would say so.

***Actually, it's supposed to be said 'On the BS scale, how far up does that go?', but this makes more sense for people who aren't familiar with that phrase. So, everyone outside of my family. My grandfather made the phrase up.


	13. Bilingual Bastards

a/n: It's been... a long time? Hi. Have you grown since last time? Probably.

* * *

><p>Alex fiddled with a pencil on his desk. The teacher sent up two victims to the white board, and they explained the math problems to the class. He wondered why Blunt still said that he should go to his public school. His reason, he said, was that Alex needed the education. Alex's argument was that he <em>did<em> get the education-it just tended to be from places that were run by crazy, narcissistic psychopaths instead of the norm.

The teacher, Mr. Avian, asked the two teens, "And how can each of your equations be used in real life?"

Both gave an answer that seemed reasonable enough in the world they lived in, but to Alex neither were helpful. He glanced at their substitute teacher, who returned the glance, as both tried to figure out what the other was doing there. Alex had had no idea Eagle knew math, let alone could teach it. Eagle had had no idea how old Cub was, or that he had attended public school. Each measured the others' actions, wondering if they could ask later or if the usual answer of 'classified' would be the only response.

It amused Alex that they had given him the codename Avian without even bothering to fool him, and decided to ask once the bell rang if Mr. Lupine, Mr. Ophidia, or Mr. Vulpes* would be teaching his next class.

"Alright, victims, you can regain your seats. Now, your teacher says for homework, and you all get this stack each." He picked up a massive stack of packets of papers, and thudded it down into view on top of his temporary desk. He peered at the instructions again. "Wait. Oh, crap. Just one each. Damn, it would've been fun to give all this homework to each of you." He took a generous portion of the papers off the top, and handed it to the nearest person, who passed the stack back after taking a packet. "You also have pages 335 to 337 to do. Packet's due Friday, it says. You have the rest of the period to work on both. If I find you talking, I will give you detention. If I find you doing something you're not supposed to be doing, I will give you detention. If the need strikes me, I will give you detention. Clear?"

With ten minutes left in the class to go, they got started on their homework. Eagle watched them all with a critical eye, and several times ended up in a staring match with Cub, who would look up and fix him with an icy stare at random intervals. Two other teens, twins from the look of it, sat at the back of the classroom. They didn't appear to be talking, but they didn't appear to be doing homework either. He was about to go back there and ask them what they were doing, when something glinted out of the corner of his eye.

He reflexively leaned back, and he saw Alex look up at the gesture. His gaze flickered to the window, and he scanned the buildings visible outside of the window without turning his head. After a few more seconds of scrutiny, Eagle and Alex looked back to each other. Taking a guess, Eagle said, "Hat sonst jemand in der Schule kennen diese Sprache?" _Does anybody else in the classroom know this language?_

With a shrug, Alex said, "Ich weiß nicht."_ I don't know._

"Wir tun, aber nichts dagegen uns," one of the twins in the back said. _We do, but don't mind us._

Turning around in his seat, Alex said, "Mustang schickte ihr Jungs hier draußen? Sollte ich fühle mich geehrt?" _Mustang sent you guys out here for the day? Should I feel honored?_

With a glance at a paper on his desk, Eagle read the first teen's name as Edward Elric, and his brother as Alphonse. "Was ist los? Cub, was machst du hier?" _What's going on here? Cub, what are you doing here?_

With an amused tone, he replied, "Ich gehe hier zur Schule."_ I go to school here._ "Als für das, was vor sich geht, sieht es aus wie es ist ein Scharfschütze draußen." _As for what's going on, it looks like there's a sniper outside._

By then, all sounds of scribbling pencil had stopped. The other students watched as the German speech continued, uncaring of their ignorance. Somebody muttered a question about it, but no one answered.

"Hat das Licht blinkt viermal nacheinander zu jeder Zeit?" Alphonse asked. _Did the light blink four times consecutively at any time?_ Alex nodded. "Das ist Hawkeye, dann."_ That's Hawkeye, then._ "Mach dir keine Sorgen um sie, wird sie nicht erschieß." _Don't worry about her, she won't shoot you._

"I'm pretty sure most people aren't having this conversation in school right now," Eagle mused in English, and then switched back to German. "Werde ich keine andere Antwort als: 'Das ist geheim', wenn ich mich, warum gibt es einen Scharfschützen außerhalb fragen zu bekommen?" _Am I going to get any answer other than "That's classified" if I ask why there's a sniper outside?_

With a demonic grin that startled the people around him, Alex said, "Niemand gab mir keinen Beschränkungen unterworfen. Eigentlich haben sie nichteinmal die Mühe, mir zu sagen, sie schickten jemand anderes hier. Für einmalhabe ich zu sichern. Ich denke, es war ein Fehler in der Papierkram." _Nobody gave me any restrictions. Actually, they didn't even bother to tell me they were sending anybody else here. For once, I have backup. I think there was an error in the paperwork._

Turning back to face the brothers again, Alex asked, "Was macht ihr hier?" _What are you two doing here?_

Edward shrugged and said, "Offenbar waren Mustang Vorgesetzten nicht glücklich über einige allgemeine Tod..." _Apparently, Mustang's superiors weren't happy about some general's death..._

Alex nodded. "Oh, ihn." _Oh, him. _"Er war ein Scorpia Agenten, aber die Amestrians nicht scheint das zu glauben." _He was a Scorpia agent, but the Amestrians don't seems to believe that._

"Was hat das mit dem Scharfschützengewehr außerhalb der Ost-Fenster zu tun? Und ich kann sehen, dass es eine andere außerhalb dieses Fensters zu." Wolf asked as he made his presence in the room. Eagle waved, and Wolf shot him a look._ What does that have to do with the sniper outside the east window? And I can see there's another one outside this window too._

"Nun, Scorpia nicht wie ihre Agenten verpfiffen raus, und Amestris nicht denken, ich bin ehrlich." _Well, Scorpia doesn't like their agents getting ratted out, and Amestris doesn't think I'm truthful._

"Sie verpfiffen eine Scorpia?" _You ratted out a Scorpia?_

"Nein, ich tötete ihn." _No, I killed him._ The Elrics looked unsurprised, but K-Unit stared at him. After a moment's consideration, he added, "Also ich denke, ich habe eigentlich." _So I guess I did, actually._

"Was ist los? Wo ist Amestris?" Wolf asked, repeating Eagle's earlier question. _What's going on? Where's Amestris?_

"Niemand scheint in der Lage sein, um Ihre erste Frage zu beantworten, aberAmestris ist hier." _No one seems to be able to answer your first question, but Amestris is here._ Edward lifted one of the papers he and Alphonse had been using to sketch arrays on, and pointed to a spot. Pointing to another spot, he said, "Wir sind hier." _We're here._

"Was soll der ganzen Raum zwischen den Flecken?" _What's all the space in between the spots? _Eagle asked.

"Dunkle Materie und eine Menge anderer Sachen," Alphonse replied. _Dark matter and a lot of other stuff._

"Es ist eine lange Geschichte," Edward added on with exasperation. _It's a long story._

"Was sind jedermanns Bestellungen?" Alex asked. _What are everybody's orders?_

"Alles, was sie erzählte uns, was die Hölle aus Loslösung zu verhindern. Sie warenunspezifisch, wie oder welche Art von Hölle," Wolf replied, seeing that this wouldn't be going anywhere unless he answered some questions. _All they told us what to prevent all hell from breaking loose. They were nonspecific as to how, or what kind of hell._

"Mustang wörtlich sagte uns, deinen Arsch vom Fang in Brand zu halten," Ed said. _Mustang literally told us to keep your ass from catching on fire._

"That's charming, that is," Alex muttered. "Ich habe keine Aufträge." _I don't have any orders._

"I've got an idea," Snake said, rolling his eyes. "You, kids." He pointed at the oblivious students. "Sit, stay. You four." He looked meaningfully at the brothers, Cub, and Eagle. "How about we step into the hallway? So we don't have to keep up with the German?"

"Yeah, that works."

* * *

><p>"So what do we do?" Eagle asked as soon as most explanations were over with. "We should get the rest of the school children away from the windows, in case the snipers try to take a hit at them, but if we enter and give obvious explanations that everyone needs to get out, they might take a shot."<p>

The group pondered this question. Two more men joined them, and flashed MI5 badges. One of them and Alex exchanged glares, before going back to working a way around the problem. Finally, Alex broke off from the group and pulled aside a kid wandering in the hall. After a few words, the kid nodded and padded towards the principal's office, a gleam in his eyes. Alex walked back with a satisfied smirk.

"Problem solved," he said. "We need to back away from the doors, though, or we're going to be trampled..."

"What did you do?" one the MI5 men asked accusingly.

"Before we go there, what are you two doing here?" Edward demanded.

"We're supposed to stop the Scorpia attack on this school. It's taking place because of him," the MI5 agent said, gesturing angrily at Alex.

"I'm sorry for existing," Alex dryly replied. "Now tell me, just what the hell are you doing inside the building if you're trying to stop something that's going to take place outside of it?"

"The school needs protection inside for when they enter," the other man sneered.

Wolf frowned. "If Scorpia can get their work done long range, then they do. They don't get up close and personal unless there's not another way or unless their purpose requires it. Hence the snipers. So I'll ask his question again: What are you doing _in here_?"

They were saved from answering when a voice came over the intercom: "Hi everybody! The student council has been kind enough to throw a surprise party in the gym for all the students, with popcorn and movies and some other stuff. Staff gets their own party in their lounge. Be free, chained prisoners of the classrooms!"

Even before he had finished the last sentence, students started pouring out of the classrooms.

"What did you do?" Fox asked.

"I asked the school troublemaker to give me a hand. He's a friend of mine, and was all too willing to comply. Now, we best get down to the gym before any of them start to come out."

They merged into the traffic, and slipped into the gym ahead of most of the students. They gained control of both entrances, and got to work persuading students the popcorn and movies were coming soon. Meanwhile, they also searched the crowd for any adults that weren't supposed to be there.

"They probably have microphones planted," Alphonse murmured. "This should turn out well enough. Didn't Mustang say he would be dropping in?"

"Yeah, he should be here any time now..." Edward replied, voice quiet.

Finally, the students began to realize the lie that they had been told, and began to voice their complaints as loudly as possible. Wolf gestured at them to Alex, unable to make himself heard over the roar. Before Alex could make any sort of reply, a sound came over the speakers.

Having located the microphone and hooked it up, Eagle tapped on it. The feedback silenced the students as they covered their ears. "Thank you," he said. "I can't tell you what's going on if you're being that loud. You're upsetting sleep on Mars. Now, as for the missing popcorn and movies... Well, it's missing. We've got people looking for it now, so just hang on for a few more minutes..."

"Excuse me!" a high pitched voice said. A girl came into view. "I'm _on_ the student council, and we never came up with any such thing. Just what is going on here?"

_"Failure,"_ Alex coughed into his fist. To his luck, the microphone didn't pick it up. One of the MI5 agents shot him a dirty look, however.

"...Um..." Eagle wasn't so lucky, and that sound _was_ picked up. The crowd became even more doubtful.

Wolf rolled his eyes, and grabbed the mike from him. "There was a mistake, and the wrong thing got overheard. The teachers came up with the idea, but it seems the delivery truck was late. I'm just a sub, so I'm not really sure what's going on either." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a group of angry teachers come through the door. Alphonse rubbed his head, dreading what was coming. "Just keep your voice levels down while we get this figured out." He shoved the microphone back to Eagle, who bounced it like it was a hot potato.

Wolf strode over to the group of teachers, who were arguing with the two people from MI5. Alex and the Elrics trailed after him, while the rest of the K-Unit started working on crowd control with the raucous group of teenagers. "Is there a problem?" the unit leader asked as he came to a stop by the teachers.

"No problem, we're just getting things sorted out," the first agent said hastily. The teachers' expressions said differently.

Wolf rolled his eyes, and herded the entire group out into the hallway with just a simple gesture of his arms. As soon as the gym doors closed, he turned to the MI5 agents and said, "You're not going to fool the staff with the same crap we told the students, you idiots." Turning to the staff and ignoring the furious expressions behind him, he said, "We're from the Department of Well Being and Disease. I regret to inform you that this school may have been exposed to a case of cholera. We don't want to scare the kids, and we're still running tests to authenticate or disprove this. It would be best to keep this quiet until that time."

Several of them were looking pale, and one hiccuped.

"I'm going to ask you to return to the teacher's lounge while we conduct the tests, because they can be hazardous to your health if you are wandering around the corridors." With that dismissal, the staff filed quickly back in the direction they had come.

"The Department of What?" Alphonse asked, eyebrow raised in amusement.

Wolf shrugged. "If that actually exists, I'd be shocked."

"Cholera?" one of the MI5 agents asked.

"First thing I could think of," Wolf admitted. "Better than saying the Black Plague."

The other agent looked away, seeming embarrassed. He'd probably been thinking of saying that.

"Alright, now all we need to do is get popcorn to make it look like we're actually honest-" Snake started.

An explosion went off elsewhere in the building. The walls rocked, and the lights flickered. Screams went off in the gym from the children, and the staff dropped down onto the floor. Snake shouted at them, and they scrambled over and into the gym. The agents, operatives, and alchemists ran in after them, letting the door swing closed behind them.

There was no doubting what had caused the explosion. While teenagers can be dense, their imaginations are also extensive. They easily guessed the real reason behind their confinement to the gym. Shouts and screams about terrorists echoed about the room, and some kids tried to get out in efforts that had obviously not been very thought through.

" 'They don't get up close and personal', eh?" one of the MI5 agents snapped.

Wolf turned on him. "Unless there's no other way. This is our part of the job, so shut up and let us do it. Fox, you and Snake go around and-"

The door opened, and the FFSAS unit whipped out their concealed guns from various positions to aim them at the intruder. The intruder merely paused, eyed the guns, and then gave the ones holding them a doubtful expression. "Really?" he asked, unamused. The students behind them had fallen silent, and the staff had given up at trying to comfort them.

Edward glared at him. "You could've given us some sort of warning before you made your entrance!"

"The explosion _was_ my warning."

"That was you?" the taller of the two MI5 agents snapped.

Alex muttered, "Yes, and he also outranks you, dimwit." That made him pause, and Mustang smirked.

"As a matter of fact, I do. Now, Hawkeye and the rest of our team have secured the western side of the school, and we've got that tunnel below the building. We can evacuate everyone through there," the alchemist said. "We're having some diplomatic difficulties, and Blunt is asking that Rider gives him a hand with that. K-Unit, if you want, you can go help with securing the southern side-" He barely finished the sentences before the gym doors closed behind them. "That would be a yes. As for you two," he said, looking at the Elrics, "you can either help herd these kids through the tunnel or go help with the northern side." They too disappeared.

"What about us?" the shorter MI5 agent said.

Mustang gave them a self-satisfied look. "Someone has to do the herding, and your help just left. That would leave you two. Good luck. The tunnel's right next to the cafeteria."

"There's a tunnel under the school?" a teacher demanded. "Why were we not informed of this?"

"You were," Alex explained. "Did they not tell you there was construction last week? They never did specify."

"And before I forget," Mustang said, turning to him. "Have you found a solution yet to that one particular issue?"

Alex shook his head. "Alas, I can no longer see my desk. It's buried beneath all the paperwork. Which is why I have requested to remain completely in the field, so I no longer have to deal with it."

"That's one way to go about it, but I don't think my superiors would fall for it."

"Probably not, no. Unless you suddenly pick up a talent for spying, anyway."

"Remind Blunt about the OSAs, will you?" Mustang surveyed the silent, wide-eyed group in front of them. "You're going to need a lot."

Alex looked at all of them. "Definitely. Maybe I can finally convince Blunt that this idea of public education just isn't going to work."

"What the hell is going on?" a teacher blurted.

"Ever going to tell them?" Mustang asked doubtfully.

"Nope."

* * *

><p>*I looked this up. Avian is the scientific name for bird, lupine for wolf, ophidia for snake, and vulpes for fox. Obviously, the names weren't meant to last long as cover.<p>

This was kinda random. Hope you liked it. Sorry about any mistakes in the German, but I don't speak it. Thank you, Google translator.


	14. Transpose

Ever since Edward and Alphonse's mother had died, they had lived in Chelsea with their father. He had tried his best for the next few years, he really had, but he had not been the best at his fathering skills even when his wife was alive and he mourned for a long time when she died. By the time he was ready to take care of his children, Edward had already taken over and the boys no longer needed his help. Alphonse would have regrets for years about not trying to connect with their father more, but Edward never did.

In those years of their father's vacancy, the boys explored their mother's old office at home and found papers that had clearly been important but had no meaning to anyone but her. They took the papers before people from her work came to clear out her office. There was a fluster for a while about missing documents, but the boys thought nothing of it at the time, deciding the papers were theirs to keep. When they were older, though, it occurred to them that the actions of their mother's coworkers had been rather odd. After much talk and persuasion from Edward's part, they decided that something strange was going on and they should discover what it was.

So they broke into her old office at the Royal and General Bank.

She had told them a few times about the view from her window overlooking a certain street that the boys used to get to school, so they used that to figure out where her office was. Instead of dealing with the hassle of figuring out the layout of the building and since there was obviously a window, they scaled the side of the building instead of breaking in through the front doors.

_"Ow, move your foot out of my neck!"_

_"It's not in your neck, it's on your skin!" _

_"Well, move it!"_

In the middle of their break in as Edward hoisted Alphonse in through the window, security arrived with guns and ordered them to put their hands up. Rather than do so, they simply froze to avoid being riddled with holes until two of the security agents pulled Alphonse up and separated the two. They were taken to different rooms and interrogated for hours. Eventually, they were released and sent home. Their father had been asleep and they thought he had never learned of their midnight adventure.

One day, when Edward was fifteen and Alphonse fourteen, their father didn't come home.

A car crash seemed extremely unlikely and it was even odder that their mother's old work place would be the ones appointed to tell them of their parent's death. As the two were beginning to associate that place with words like 'peculiar', 'suspicious', and 'extremely unlikely', they did what any reasonable pair of teenage boys would do when all those words were put in the same context once more.

They broke into the Royal and General again.

Hiding in the janitor's trash bin actually got them to where they needed to go without suspicion, albeit with quite the stench. The janitors were tired and overworked, and apparently didn't want to check to see why the two bins they had weighed the same as a child. Whatever the reason, the boys were able to get into Trisha Elric's office, grab some files, and get back out after being flung down the garbage shoot.

_"Why didn't they empty her office? It's been years!" _

_"Weird, I know. Kinda feels like a trap." _

_"I would say the same, but why would they think we would try breaking in again?"_

It was a trap.

A man dressed entirely in grey and a dark-skinned woman were waiting in their living room when they got home. They introduced themselves, stated their government positions as the head and deputy of MI6, and then proceeded to blackmail them.

In retrospect, it was all rather neat and tidy. Until Edward began throwing things at the two, but that was inevitable. That was how the world found itself in the presence of two of youngest, most influential, least inconspicuous, and best spies it would ever know.

* * *

><p>Alex Rider had grown up in Risembool, but he had only lived with his parents there for a while. They had gone into the Ishvalan War when he was four and hadn't come home. His uncle and an associate of his, Jack, took care of him until he turned eight. An illness swept over the town and his uncle died.<p>

Alex had always been a quiet and calm child, keeping to himself usually but pleasant enough in conversation. No one thought it was strange when he became quieter following the death of his third family member and stayed secluded in his room for days at a time. Unbeknownst to everyone, even Jack, the family friend, he had begun studying alchemy. To stop anyone from picking up on his plan, he hid all the alchemy books under other papers or books. Although he was smart, he knew his talents were in street smarts and common sense, not in the academic fields. That didn't stop him from pushing as hard as he could.

To anyone else, it would have been surprising to see a nine year old so devoted to something, but Jack wasn't. She saw through his plot pretty quickly but kept silent, never expecting him to do anything brash. She had come over from the country of Creta, working with Ian Rider as part of the liaison group between the countries. With him gone, it was looking less and less likely that she would stay another year. She kept her concerns to herself and continued trying to find someone to work with so she could continue caring for the boy who had become like a younger brother to her.

The river flooded one year and would certainly have destroyed part of the village had it not been for the efforts of an alchemist. Shortly after building a barricade against the raging waters, she collapsed, blood coming out of her mouth. Her husband and Alex immediately hurried forward to get her somewhere that wasn't on the muddy ground. Along with Jack, they made her comfortable until she woke up, as her husband said this wasn't abnormal. As soon as she did, Alex started asking her questions about how exactly she had built the wall and how she had managed to make it dry and compact when the soil had been soaked and clumpy.

The two spent hours talking about alchemy, and Sig and Jack went off into their own little conversation as they had no clue what the two of them were going on about. When it came time for Sig and Izumi to leave, Jack sent Alex off so she could talk to them in private. She explained that she was surely going to be sent back to Creta soon and Alex wasn't going to have a roof to live under. Not only that, but he had taken a distinct interest in alchemy. Would the Curtis family be interested in taking him in?

That was how Alex found himself moving to Dublith. He studied under Izumi, learning everything he could for a year. The physical aspect of her training wasn't hard for him, but the mental part was more strenuous. He learned through dedication and commitment rather than a natural talent for intelligence. When he was done with his training, he remained at the house, occasionally working on an alchemical project with Izumi but mostly just studying alone. He knew his caretakers were happy to let him grow on his own, just as they were happy to give him a friendly shove in the right direction.

He also knew Izumi would have taken his head off if she knew he was planning on talking to the Truth, so he didn't mention it.

Through vague comments of Izumi's about life and death, as well as equivalent exchange, he had managed to figure out that there was something that made sure to keep this balance. He asked about it several times, but had learned not to after Izumi realized he was very observant and stopped making any sort of reference to it. He started working on a way to contact this being, and when he was done, he went to an abandoned part of town that no one ever went into anymore.

Ian had made his choice to serve the military and had died from it. Bringing him back would mean Alex would have to pay too high of a price, and he wasn't sure he could pull it off. No, what he wanted to know was why he had died. The government was too untrustworthy to believe. Ian's sickness had been to abrupt and his death left more than lingering doubts in Alex's mind. He wanted to know why this had happened and why everything he had been told was right was in fact a lie.

His thirst for knowledge was sated with a grin and an open door. He listened, even when it hurt, and he paid his price. His body mattered little to him and his life had no goal to push him along with, so the Truth refused to take either. What did matter to the boy was his mental preservation, his ability to see past people's lies and into the center of what they wanted. After all, that's what he had been after, coming to the Truth when he couldn't read the lies out of someone who was dead. What did matter was the ability to see properly, to figure that sort of thing out.

Alex woke up in the abandoned tunnel and lay there for a few moments, soaking in everything he had just learned. A few moments turned into a few hours, and Izumi went out on a search for him. She was livid when she learned what he had done and was stunned to learn he was uninjured. The entire time she yelled at him, he looked at her with an extremely confused expression. When she was done and started dragging him home, she demanded for the fifth time to know how he felt. He said he felt fine, and then walked straight into a wall and knocked himself out.

It turned out that he had indeed been given the ability to see past the lies, to see past the future into what people's ulterior motives were. He could see a few seconds into the future, but the moments he saw ranged from being a few moments ahead to an entire minute ahead and he had no warning about which it might be. He heard everything the same, however, which only further served to confuse him. While walking, the wall would be a few seconds closer than it should be, and he would dodge it prematurely only to run into another one that he thought he had already missed. As a result of this, he was essentially rendered blind.

Izumi tied a blindfold around his eyes and would let him loose in the middle of a crowded street. He learned to judge his surroundings by hearing and not sight to learn how close away things were. When he could successfully dodge through a compact space without hitting anything more than someone with their vision would, Izumi took the blindfold off. It seemed like they were back to the square one for a while until Alex learned to combine his hearing and vision. He also learned that if he tried to change the future, it would only further disorient him. He once moved in the way of a runaway dog, but as soon as he did so, his vision went black for several long moments until the new actions of the people around him had been taken into consideration.

The price he had paid, it seemed, was the considerable amount of trouble he managed to get himself into and the inability to get out of it. Within a single week, he managed to get caught in a field of mad hogs, fall from the second story of a neighbor's roof with their cat in his hands, nearly get run over by three consecutive cars, get someone with appendicitis to the hospital while acting as a shepherd to the teenager's younger sister, and witness an attempted murder. He was unable to prevent a lot of it, something that took a considerable toll on his innocence and need to help. The gift of knowing everything was the price in and of itself. To know everything, but be unable to stop everything.

A man named Maes Hughes stopped by to tell him that they were going to officially send Jack home. He had apologetically explained that if she had no job (and with no one to give information to, she didn't), she had to leave. Alex asked questions and kept him talking for hours until he asked if _he_ could be the one she was giving information to. Hughes said Alex couldn't be because he didn't work for the government, but Alex pointed out that there were no age limits in the state alchemist's registration and that he already wanted to join anyway because he had noticed some irregularities in the system. Hughes had brought Roy Mustang around later to talk to the boy.

_"I can help."_

_"You're not even officially a teenager."_

_"Yeah, but I know that the Fuhrer isn't human."_

_"There's no way you could possibly know that."_

_"Of course I can. I broke into the Fuhrer's office. And some of the other information I got would surely be incredibly interesting to the media, but it could also be used by someone looking to climb his way up the ranks and take the position of Fuhrer for himself."_

_"Oh?"_

And so he was recruited into the State Alchemist ranks, eyesight be damned, and worked under Mustang. The boy went from a joke to a threat soon enough, stumbling upon problem after problem around him without even meaning to. Black market trading dropped fifty percent, corrupt politicians were outcast, and secrets no longer seemed so safe. An alchemist who saw through everything had been born.

* * *

><p>Wolf gritted his teeth, glaring across the table at his former team member. "Fox, I don't care if he wiggled his way into getting us to the transport zone in a private jet, I am going to <em>strangle him<em>."

"Yeah, that's how I feel," Fox said dryly. "He's an ass. Just imagine what it would be like if his brother weren't here." The two brothers were at the back of the plane, completely oblivious (or uncaring) of the hostilities directed toward them from the front. "Look, he really isn't…_that_ bad. He's just so arrogant and stuck-up it seems like he is."

"I. Don't. Care."

"I felt the same way for the first few months. Actually, I felt more like a public relations agent between the two of them and…the rest of the world, not back up. Really, they're not so bad once you get used to the fact that no matter what you do, they're going to get into trouble and solve the entire problem in the most obnoxious an insane way yet there won't be a single casualty. It's less like a secret mission and more like a hostage negotiation, only the hostage takers are the Elrics and they're holding everyone's sanity for ransom until they give in and say everything MI6 is looking to know."

"Fox-"

"Yeah, you don't care, I got it."

Wolf leaned back in the plush chair, arms folded. "Explain one more time what we're supposed to do. I think my brain was bleeding from the pipsqueak's inability to shut up."

"_SAY THAT ONE MORE TIME_!"

Fox sighed and gave Edward an apologetic look over Wolf's shoulder. "He was talking about a literal mouse in his apartment, sorry." The lie seemed like something that had been told many times to keep Edward from going off on a murder rampage every other day. He looked back to Wolf as Edward turned away, grumbling. "Those two are going to sneak around as the politicians and command officers sweet talk the leaders of Amestris. They're supposed to make sure this county isn't hiding anything we really need to know. You're coming along in case they react badly to their presence and try to kill them."

"Isn't the point of having spies so the enemy doesn't know they're having their intelligence stolen?"

"I don't think you know what the meaning of a spy is, but what really matters is that the two boys are going to make a huge ruckus and everyone is going to know why they're there and who they are. We might as well be prepared for whatever chaos the two cause."

"Why _us_?"

"Because they pissed off a lot of people last time and this is their punishment."

"What did _we_ do to deserve this?"

Fox eyed him. "You got into a fist fight with a teenager who was just supposed to be tagging along."

"He was being completely disrespectful, rude, obnoxious-"

"You had met him for ten minutes!"

"Hey, I didn't see you trying to break it up."

"I'm not saying you were wrong, I'm just saying that's why you're here."

"Whatever. When are we landing?"

"Half an hour. We're going to have some state alchemists meet us there to get us to the other side of this…portal…thing…"

"State alchemists?"

"Did you guys read the report?"

"Report?"

Fox planted his face in his hand with a moan.

They landed forty minutes later, slowed by some turbulence. The delay wasn't too much of a problem, as they walked twelve meters off the plane and the state alchemists were right there to meet them. Well, the state alchemists and someone's kid, but still. Unlike some other teenagers that could have been mentioned, this one was polite and quiet, shaking hands and smiling kindly. His gaze flickered oddly over everyone, eyes focused on them before they even shifted to a new position. It was rather unnerving and the first tip off that maybe he actually had a reason there.

Edward and Alphonse stood back, staring at the alchemists curiously but not interacting. There were small mercies, at least. Maybe there was a possibility that they could start this off on the right foot. Mustang, one of the alchemists, introduced all of them as the Strong Arm Alchemist, Louis Armstrong; the Crimson Lotus Alchemist, Solf Kimblee; and the Silent Alchemist, Alex Rider. It seemed the boy was, indeed, there for a reason, then.

"Alright," Mustang said. He somehow managed to look suave and aloof while being extremely professional. Did he practice that in front of the mirror? His eyes swept over the British group in front of him with a contemplative look in his eyes. "Looks like we've got everyone. Here's what's going to happen. We're going to open the portal and everyone's going to go through. There are some cars on the other side. The Amestrians are going to drive, and you guys can figure out how you're getting divided up between them. I get that you're a protection detail and I'm not going to mess with that, considering the next part of what will happen. On the way to the Central HQ, we are most likely going to be either in a car crash, narrowly avoid hitting half the pedestrians crossing the street, get a flat tire, or all of the above."

The SAS operatives and the MI6 agents exchanged glances and gave the colonel a strange look.

"I know it sounds extremely unlikely, but it'll happen. Multiple times."

"Why?" Edward said. It was a simple enough question with good reason behind it, but did he really have to sound so snarky about it?

"It's a long story. We are not under attack, I assure you, but it is a common enough occurrence that I am stating that it will happen."

Wolf frowned. "As you said, we're here for protection. It's important we know exactly what's going on."

Mustang rolled his eyes. "It's a stupid reason. You don't want to know."

"Let me be the judge-"

"Colonel," Alex interrupted, although it wasn't impatient or rude, "it'll make it easier for them to do their jobs."

Mustang let out an annoyed sigh before gesturing at the other alchemist. "He's extremely unlucky."

The British group all stared at him for a minute. "That's _it_?" Snake deadpanned .

"Yeah."

"That's unrealistic and stupid. Why are we _really_ going to have such bad fortune?" Wolf demanded.

"I can't explain it," Mustang said, exasperated, "because all I know is that it happens every time he's in the area. As soon as you're away from him, everything will be back to normal. Like I said, it's happened enough times that I just accept it as fact now."

"He's being honest," Armstrong said. "It happens every time."

No one spoke for a moment.

"Okay!" Alex said, trying to diffuse the tense atmosphere. "Let's go through already."

* * *

><p>While nothing that Mustang had predicted came true, the first car was attacked by a flock of chickens and the second one got stuck in tar when they were only a few blocks away from the HQ. Not wanting to deal with the car when they were so close, they simply decided to walk the rest of the way and leave the cars for someone else to deal with. They passed the soldiers who had been stuck with that job as they walked on the sidewalk.<p>

Before anyone could comment on their amount of misfortune, a moving truck took a corner too fast, the back doors slid open, and the furniture slid out across the street right in front of them. Alex's hand shot out and yanked Eagle out of the way from being crushed by a bed frame.

Meanwhile, Edward and Alphonse had spent the entire walk over trying to not-very-subtly extract all the information they could from the alchemists. Their efforts would have been ridiculous if the Strong Arm alchemist had not talked to easily about everything and the Flame Alchemist responded to jibes with knowledge. In summary, what should have been a five minute drive to HQ turned into a half hour expedition.

"The Fuhrer wants to see you," Kimblee said smoothly, just as he did everything. He tilted his head to the side, the edge of his hat momentarily blocking the view of one eye. "It won't take long and he'll lay out some basic guidelines."

He walked through the gates with K Unit and the Strong Arm Alchemist behind him. Alex reached forward and grabbed Edward's and Alphonse's arms to stop them from following. "I'm going to show you to the records," Alex simply explained as they looked at him in surprise.

Fox, having learned not to go anywhere without them in his sight, had stopped as soon as they had and eyed him. "Didn't the other alchemist just say we were supposed to go talk to the Fuhrer?"

Alex snorted. "Well, we all know he's just going to lie to you guys, and these two are going to sneak off later anyway to go figure out what's really going on so there's no point in wasting two hours of your time."

"Oh, thanks," Edward said. He glanced at Mustang. "You in on this idea?"

With a sour expression, the colonel bluntly replied, "I'm here to make sure Daniels comes with me. We can fib about two of you and get away with it because you're known to sneak off, but you should probably have more than half of your reconnaissance group seem mature enough to go meet with the Fuhrer."

"Oh, right." Edward made a shooing hand gesture. "Ben, skidaddle."

Fox rolled his eyes. "Rider, don't let them go running off on their own."

Alex mock-saluted two moments later. The pause was a little strange but no one commented. Mustang didn't even seem to notice. "The colonel can show you where we're at when you're all done, sir," he said.

Fox feigned surprise. "Oh my God. A teenager with authority who actually has respect." He glanced at the brothers. "Can you teach them?"

"We'll see you later," Alphonse said with a laugh. Fox smirked and walked off with Mustang. The two started amiably talking immediately. Alex nodded to himself, seeming to confirm something with himself. "What?" Alphonse asked curiously.

Alex started glancing at him a moment before he finished. "Hm? Oh, just thinking that their situations are to similar to immediately hate each other. Once they start learning more about each other's methods, though, they'll be at each other's throats."

"You read people well?"

"Yeah. I can predict what they'll do next and it taught me a lot about what kinds of people there are and what they'll do even further in the future." He gestured to them to follow him as he made his way across the courtyard. "Alright, a guy named Maes Hughes is going to be meeting us in the records room. He's a little over the top when it comes to emotions but he's not a bad guy once you get used to the oppressive and overwhelmed feeling."

"Hey, isn't the Fuhrer going to be pissed with you?" Edward asked.

"Do you care?"

"No."

"He'll be expecting it. We don't have a loving relationship. It's more…tolerable. When's that SAS unit going to notice you're missing and come looking?"

"I thought you were supposed to predict everyone's next moves," Edward said dryly. Alphonse jabbed him in the ribs. "They probably already noticed and are doing their best to make sure we don't catch up to the group again. We have a relationship that is less than tolerable."

"You have authority figure issues and all of them have a superiority complex. Obviously."

"You _don't_ have authority figure issues?"

"I think they think they're the superior ones in the room, but they're really just stupid," Alex said frankly. "I've got problems beyond authority figure issues, like my huge ego."

"This is going to go well," Alphonse muttered.

They walked into the records room a few minutes later, opening the door to reveal a man sitting on a table waiting for them. He hopped off and strolled over with a grin. "Ah, the annoying brats have arrived!" he said cheerfully. "Come on, we've got a lot to cover and only about ten minutes."

"Hey, you can't call someone annoying when that's exactly what you're being!" Edward snapped.

"I'm just being _observant_," Hughes remarked. "Woah, how old are you? I mean, really, you're kinda small for-"

"_I am not small enough to fit in a pocket and be carried around like a chew toy for small lap dogs_!"

"…Aaalright, then."

Alphonse looked over Edward's shoulder, holding his brother back from attacking the intelligence officer. "So, why did we have to ditch the group to come here? I assume there's a reason for it."

Hughes nodded, looking serious. "Part of the reason why Mustang made sure Kimblee went along with the group was so they could keep an eye on him. We're not entirely sure we're safe to tell you about this anyway, but we're going to because the damn rules don't apply to us."

Alphonse started to ask what they meant by that, but Alex was already talking and answering his question. "The Fuhrer isn't human. Neither is his son, or his son just has one of those faces where they look ten or twenty or thirty years younger than they actually are. I think it's safer to assume they're just not human instead. Around the country, there have been several incidents of annihilation of a group of people. The Ishvalan War, for one thing. There have been more occasions but I don't have time to go through all of them."

He walked over to the table in the middle of the room with the Elric brothers following. Hughes unrolled a map and Alex helped pin it down. Hughes took over, pointing out the small dots that had been made. "These are each locations where such occasions have occurred," he said. "It just looks strange from an outsiders perspective because it forms a perfect circle, but from an alchemist's perspective, it's dangerous. This entire country is being turned into one huge transmutation circle."

Edward frowned. "That's possible?"

"How much do you know about alchemy?" Alex asked.

Alphonse shrugged. "That's one of the things we came over here to learn about. The alchemy back home is a lot different. For one thing, it hasn't heralded nearly as much of a result as you have been able to garner. For another, they couldn't do it as quickly. It couldn't be used in battle or spontaneously. What you're using is something we know next to nothing about."

"It's science. Everything in the circle has a purpose, but a circle doesn't have to be drawn. It's about how you think about it, not how you do it. I know people who can do alchemy without drawing anything, and I know people who have never been able to do alchemy because they just don't understand the concepts behind it," Alex explained. "The circle around the entire country is being drawn. It doesn't matter that it's not being done with a pen or pencil because it's about the mindset of the alchemist and not what it looks like."

The brothers stared at the map for a moment.

"Okay, that means, like, nothing to us because we still have no clue what this circle does," Edward deadpanned.

Alex twitched irritably. "The circle isn't what's- Oh, never mind." He gestured at the map. "If this thing goes off, anyone inside the circle will die."

"Um, how many people is that?" Alphonse said, a little weakly.

"Millions," Hughes said.

"And the Fuhrer and his son have been doing this?"

"Yeah. I broke into his office to make sure and I've stalked his son a few times," Alex said. "I'm positive."

"How do you know for sure they're not human and that they're not just using alchemy to stay alive for so long?" Alphonse asked.

Hughes and Alex exchanged glances. "I may have poisoned him," Alex said slowly. Alphonse slapped his palm against his face. "Hey, he couldn't link it back to me."

"You should have been a spy," Alphonse said around his hand. "Seriously, take Ed's place and the world would be better off."

Alex snorted. "Only if he takes mine. We're going to need your brawn to try and stop this from happening, I think."

"Hey, _brawn_?"

"He's got a point there," Alphonse muttered, patting his older brother's shoulder.

"Why don't you just do it yourself?" Edward snapped.

"Because I've poisoned him a bunch of times and done everything I could to get him killed, even spending a lot of time around him in the hopes that a piano would fall out of a window on his head or something, but he's just not dying," Alex said. "We think if we kill him enough times, though, he will eventually die."

"It seems kind of stupid to try and destroy an entire country while you're the leader. Isn't it kind of obvious who's doing it, if someone figures it out?" Edward pointed out.

"Yeah, we know someone else is controlling everything," Alex said. "We're just not sure who yet. What we need is someone arrogant enough to go help flush the rest of them out. You and your bodyguard team seem perfect for it. Plus, you've got plenty of deniability."

"I feel like we're being turned into meat shields," Edward said.

Hughes nodded enthusiastically. "Uh huh! But don't worry, we're throwing everyone else out there with you. It's like a whole army of meat shields, all going out to take care of the mother of meat shields."

"…Wow, okay," Edward said, clearly having decided this guy had problems, "and what are you going to be doing?"

"I am going to be sneaking around and stealing stuff so your attempts to kill the Fuhrer will not end in everyone dying," Alex said, leaning against the table. "I'm not really suited to punching people in the faces, although you appear to go into an ass-kicking spree every other week."

"A little more often than that," Alphonse muttered. "Does the colonel know about this?"

"We've been working on it since I joined the State Alchemists years ago," Alex said. "He knows. Now, the SAS team you brought and your handler. Are they trustworthy?"

"Our _handler_?" Edward snapped.

"Yeah," Alphonse said. "They might act like jerks on occasion and we might not always see eye to eye, but they'll protect people no matter what the cost. They won't ignore something like this. Prove to them that this threat is real and they won't leave it alone until more back up has come in to help or until they physically can no longer do anything else."

Alex nodded. "Okay… When are you expected back home?"

"Our superior officers gave up on giving us a curfew since that never went according to plan," Edward snorted. "They won't be surprised if we don't return for months. Where are we starting?"

"You're just going to go along with this when we've been speaking for…five minutes?" Alex asked.

"We've done stupider," Alphonse said bluntly.

"In that case," Alex said with a grin as he extended his hand. "Welcome aboard."

* * *

><p>an: This is the last chapter for this story, simply because I have run dry on Alex Rider story ideas and have been sucked into too many different fandoms to try going back to it. This was the last idea I had for this anyway and I think it's a good way to finish this story.


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